 |
The role of analysis in NREL's hydrogen and fuel cell research is to ensure that federal R&D investments in hydrogen production, storage, distribution, and end-use technologies will provide the maximum value added to the national strategic goal of transitioning to a hydrogen economy. Integrated system analyses, technoeconomic analyses, life cycle assessments (LCAs), vehicle system analysis, hybrid power systems analysis, resource analysis and market analysis are essential to our research and development efforts. They provide an understanding of the economic, technical, and even global impacts of renewable technologies. These analyses also provide direction, focus, and support to the development and commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. NREL's Energy Analysis Office integrates and supports the energy analysis functions located in many of the laboratory's research programs and technology centers.
Technoeconomic analyses (TEAs) are performed to determine the potential economic viability of a research process. Evaluating the costs of a given process compared to the current technology can assess the economic feasibility of a project. These analyses can be useful in determining which emerging technologies have the highest potential for near-, mid-, and long-term success. The results of a TEA are also useful in directing research toward areas in which improvements will result in the greatest cost reductions. As the economics of a process are evaluated throughout the life of the project, advancement toward the final goal of commercialization can be measured. Representative publications from this work are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs (Download Acrobat Reader) including:
- The Summary of Electrolytic Hydrogen Production (PDF 736 KB) provides a technical and economic overview of the electrolytic hydrogen production systems commercially available as of December 2003.
- The Updated Cost Analysis of Photobiological Hydrogen Production from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Green Algae (PDF 678 KB) investigates the impact of cell density, light adsorption and light saturation on the economics of photobiological hydrogen production from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
- The Survey of the Economics of Hydrogen Technologies (PDF 1.1 MB) contains a survey of more than 100 publications about the economics of current and near-term hydrogen technologies, standardized to a consistent economic basis.
- Hydrogen Storage Costs of Storing and Transporting Hydrogen (PDF 1.3 MB) is the analysis of capital and operating costs for various storage and transportation methods of hydrogen.
Additional TEA publications can be found in the NREL Analysis Documents Database.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an analytic method for identifying, evaluating, and minimizing the environmental impacts of emissions and resource depletion associated with a specific process. When such an assessment is performed in conjunction with a technoeconomic feasibility study, the total economic and environmental benefits and drawbacks of a process can be quantified. Material and energy balances are used to quantify the emissions, resource depletion, and energy consumption of all processes, including raw material extraction, processing, and final disposal of products and by-products, required to make the process of interest operate. The results of this inventory are then used to evaluate the environmental impacts of the process so efforts can focus on mitigation. To date, LCA studies have been conducted on the natural gas-to-hydrogen production process and the wind/electrolysis hydrogen production system. These LCA reports are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. (Download Acrobat Reader).
- Life Cycle Assessment of Hydrogen Production via Natural Gas Steam Reforming (PDF 634 KB) summarizes the net emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as other major environmental consequences of producing hydrogen from natural gas.
- Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Hydrogen Production via Wind/Electrolysis (PDF 1.17 MB) summarizes the cradle-to-grave emissions, resource consumption, and energy of a renewable hydrogen production process which employs wind/electrolysis.
In the automotive industry, accurate component and vehicle simulation is important for making intelligent choices about efficient energy management strategies. Simulating vehicle and component performance will help you to increase the life of your components, improve vehicle performance, optimize vehicle system designs, and reduce development times. Simulation modeling is critical to rapid and efficient advanced vehicle development.
NREL has worked closely with industry to develop a sophisticated systems analysis tool capable of addressing multiple questions about specific component and vehicle designs. ADVISOR is a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) simulation model written in a widely used software environment called MATLAB/Simulink. This tool tests the impact of changes in vehicle components, such as catalytic converters, climate control systems, alternative fuels or other modifications that might impact fuel economy or emissions. The user can alter simulation results by selecting vehicle component types, sizes and parameters. To use ADVISOR, visit NREL's Center for Transportation Technologies and Systems ADVISOR Web site, or visit the new online companion tool to ADVISOR - ADVISORLite.
HOMER is a computer model that simulates and optimizes hybrid power systems, which are stand alone power plants that employ some combination of wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, or diesel generators to produce electricity. They may also include batteries for energy storage. Learn more about HOMER.
Resource Analysis determines the quantity and location of resources needed to produce hydrogen. Additionally, resource analysis quantifies the cost of the resources, as a function of the amount that can be available for hydrogen production. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modeling is used to portray and analyze resource data. GIS can also represent the spatial relationship between resources, production facilities, transportation infrastructures, and hydrogen demand centers.
Learn more about NREL's Resource Analysis and Integration activities.
Analyzing the market potential for hydrogen production from wind is complicated due to both wind and hydrogen intricacies. The market potential of hydrogen from wind depends on wind issues—wind resources, transmission access, and integration of the intermittent generation into the electric grid—as well as the complexities of hydrogen production, storage and transport and competition with other sources of hydrogen.
To address these complexities, NREL has modified its WinDS model to include hydrogen. The basic WinDS model is a multi-regional, multi-time-period, Geographic Information System (GIS) and linear programming model, which was developed to simulate the capacity expansion of the electric sector and assess the market potential of U.S. wind resources. The new WinDS-H2 model contains all the features of WinDS, and also includes hydrogen production, storage, and transport technologies. Three competing technologies that can supply hydrogen—electrolyzers at the wind site, steam methane reforming (SMR) of natural gas, and distributed electrolyzers (DE) powered by electricity from the grid (i.e. not necessarily from wind)—are included in the WinDS-H2 model.
|
|
