Life Cycle Analysis of a Hydrogen Valley with multiple end-users

This paper aims to evaluate the environmental impact along the overall life cycle of the various components of a Hydrogen Valley with multiple end-users fed by green hydrogen. As case study, a hydrogen valley including a MW-scale electrolyser powered by different percentages of energy supplied by a wind farm and/or a photovoltaic plant, and an H2 storage section is considered. The H2 produced is used to feed a fleet of fuel cell electric vehicles and a stationary fuel cell, while the residue H2 is injected in a natural gas pipeline considering a maximum safety limit of 5%vol. When the safety limit is reached, the H2 overproduction can be used to produce biomethane through a biological hydrogen methanation process. With the aim of analysing the actual contribution of these hydrogen-based ecosystems towards more sustainable energy systems, a Life Cycle Analysis of the hydrogen valley is carried out. The results show that the final use of hydrogen for fuel cell electric vehicles produces the most valuable environmental benefits. Moreover, Hydrogen Valley solutions integrated with photovoltaic plants allows to maximize the use of H2 in fuel cell electric vehicles and therefore are the most valuable choice from an environmental point of view.