Integrated hydrogen supply networks for waste biogas upgrading and hybrid carbon-hydrogen pinch analysis under hydrogen demand uncertainty

This study aims to develop integrated hydrogen supply networks (IHSNs) by combining a natural gas hydrogen supply network and a sludge-biogas-biomethane-hydrogen supply network which is an environmentally benign hydrogen production system. Sludge from wastewater treatment plants is converted into biogas by anaerobic digestion, biomethane is generated using amine technology, which is one of the biogas upgrading technologies, and finally, hydrogen is produced by steam reforming. Multi-objective two-stage stochastic mixed integer linear programming is used to simultaneously optimize the total annual cost and the total environmental cost under hydrogen demand uncertainty. An c-constraint method is employed to solve the multi-objective function, and Pareto analysis is performed to compare the results from the economic cost and the environmental cost. Then, hybrid carbon-hydrogen pinch analysis is suggested to investigate two distinct hydrogen supply networks in IHSNs, and is verified by the results and a sensitivity analysis based on supplementary wind power. Gyeongsangdo where is one of the five provinces in the Republic of Korea is applied for a case study to validate the proposed model and the results illustrate the feasibility of IHSNs.