Flexible hydrogen production source for fuel cell vehicle to reduce emission pollution and costs under the multi-objective optimization framework

As countries strive to meet their targets for reducing the effects of global climate change, the de-carbonization of energy systems becomes a hot topic in the worldwide energy business. In the meantime, Fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs) play an influential role in integrating more renewable sources and reducing urban pollution as a suitable replacement for diesel vehicles. However, emission pollution from the preparation of the primary fuel for hydrogen-based transportation cannot be neglected. This paper presents a multi-objective approach to operating FCVs along with wind and solar sources and power-to-gas (P2G) storage to reduce operating costs and pollution emissions in a hybrid power-gas-hydrogen system. One of the main concerns in the performance of FCVs is the stable supply of hydrogen as the primary fuel. In this paper, P2G is coupled with FCVs as a high-efficiency technology to convert excess electrical energy into hydrogen and natural gas to play an influential role in carbon capturing while maintaining its stable performance. The proposed hybrid system participates in the electricity and gas markets while supplying the hydrogen needed for FCV and selling hydrogen to hydrogen-based industries. Considering the uncertainty related to renewable sources and prices, the problem is modeled as a multi-objective probabilistic model, and the weighted sum approach based on fuzzy decision-making is used to solve it. After comprehensively analyzing FCV's performance, results show an 8.04% and 9.8% reduction in the cost and emission pollution, respectively, under the comprehensive operation approach of FCV and P2G technology.