3E analysis of a virtual hydrogen valley supported by railway-based H2 delivery for multi-transportation service

Abstract

In Southern Italy, near the Mediterranean Sea, mobility services like cars, bicycles, scooters, and material-handling forklifts are frequently required in addition to multimodal local transportation services, such as trains, ferry boats, and airplanes. This research proposes an innovative concept of hydrogen valley, virtually simulated in Matlab/Simulink environment, located in Calabria. As a novelty, hydrogen is produced centrally and delivered via fuel cell hybrid trains to seven hydrogen refueling stations serving various mobility hubs.

The centralized production facility operates with a nominal capacity of about 4 tons/day, producing hydrogen via PEM electrolysis, and storing hydrogen at 200 bar with a hydrogen compressor.

As the size of vehicle fleets and the cost of acquiring renewable energy through power purchase agreements vary, the hydrogen valley is examined from both a technical and an economic perspective, analyzing: the values of the levelized cost of hydrogen, the energy consumption, and the energy efficiency of the energy systems. Specifically, the levelized cost of hydrogen reached competitive values, close to 5 €/kg of hydrogen, under the most optimistic scenarios, with fleet conversions of more than 60 % and a power purchase agreement price lower than 150 €/MWh.

Then, the benefits of hydrogen rail transport in terms of emissions reduction and health from an economic standpoint are compared to conventional diesel trains and fully electric trains, saving respectively 3.2 ktons/year and 0.4 ktons/year of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, and corresponding economic benefits of respectively 51 and 0.548 million euros.