Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for use on renewable sourced hydrogen fuel cell buses vs diesel engines buses in the city of Rosario, Argentina

The purpose of this paper is to build the first Energy and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) comparison between buses with internal combustion engine currently used in the city of Rosario, Province of Santa Fe, Argentina, and some technological alternatives and their variants focusing on buses with an electrical engine powered by compressed hydrogen that feet fuel cells of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM). This LCA comprehend raw material extraction up to its consumption as fuel. Specifically, hydrogen production considering different production processes from renewable sources called green hydrogen (Velazquez Abad and Dodds, 2020) [1] and non-renewable sources called grey hydrogen (Velazquez Abad and Dodds, 2020) [1]. Renewable sources for hydrogen production are rapid cut densified poplar energy plantation, post-industrial wood residues such as chips pallets, and maize silage. For non-renewable hydrogen production sources are the local electrical power grid from water electrolysis and natural gas from the steam methane reforming process. Buses whose fuel would be renewable hydrogen, produced near the City of Rosario, Province of Santa Fe, Argentina, meet one of the main criteria of sustainability biofuels of the European Union (EU) taken into account Renewable Energy Directive (RED) 2009/28 [2] and EU RED Directive 2018/2001 [3] that need significant reduction on net greenhouse gases (GHG) from biomass origin row material respect fossil fuels. At least 70% of GHG would be avoided fromits main fossil counterpart of the intern combustion engine (ICE), in the worst and current scenario of the emission factor of the electrical grid of Argentina in the point of use that is about 0.40 kg CO2eq/kWh with energy and environmental load of 100% in the allocation factor in the hydrogen production stage of the LCA analysis. (C) 2021 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper aims to establish the first Energy and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) comparison between buses with internal combustion engine in Rosario, Argentina, and technological alternatives with electrical engines powered by compressed hydrogen. The study considers the production processes of renewable and non-renewable hydrogen, meeting sustainability criteria and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from biomass compared to fossil fuels.