Germany

Hydrogen produced by renewable energy sources (green hydrogen) is at the centrepiece of European decarbonization strategies necessitating large imports from third countries. Egypt potentially stands out as major production hub. While technical and economic viability are broadly discussed in literature analyses of local acceptance are absent. This study closes this gap by surveying 505 locals in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (Port Said and Suez) regarding their attitudes towards renewable energy development and green hydrogen production. We find overall support for both national deployment and export to Europe. Respondents see a key benefit in rising income thereby strongly underlying the economic argument. Improved trade relationships or improved political relationships are seen as potential benefits of export but as less relevant for engaging in cooperation putting a spotlight on local benefits. Our study suggests that the local population is more positive than negative towards the development and scaling up of green hydrogen projects in Egypt.

This study introduces a hybrid energy storage system that combines advanced flywheel technology with hydrogen fuel cells and electrolyzers to address the variability inherent in renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Flywheels provide quick energy dispatch to meet peak demand while hydrogen fuel cells offer sustained power over extended periods. The research explores the strategic integration of these technologies within a hybrid photovoltaic (PV)-flywheel‑hydrogen framework aiming to stabilize the power supply. To evaluate the impact of flywheel integration on system sizing and load fluctuations simulations were conducted both before and after the flywheel integration. The inclusion of the flywheel resulted in a more balanced energy production and consumption profile across different seasons notably reducing the required fuel cell capacity from 100 kW to 30 kW. Additionally the integration significantly enhanced system stability enabling the fuel cell and electrolyzer to operate at consistent power during load fluctuations. The system achieved efficiencies of 71.42 % for the PEM electrolyzer and 62.14 % for the PEM fuel cell. However the introduction of the flywheel requires a higher capacity of PV modules and a larger electrolyzer. The overall flywheel's efficiency was impacted by parasitic energy losses resulting in an overall efficiency of 46.41 %. The minimum efficiency observed across various scenarios of the model studied was 3.14 % highlighting the importance of considering these losses in the overall system design. Despite these challenges the hybrid model demonstrated a substantial improvement in the reliability and stability of renewable energy systems effectively bridging short-term and long-term energy storage solutions.

Hydrogen is a versatile energy carrier which can be produced from variety of feedstocks stored and transported in various forms for multi-functional end-uses in transportation energy and manufacturing sectors. Several regional national and supra-national climate policy frameworks emphasize the need value and importance of Fuel cell and Hydrogen (FCH) technologies for deep and sector-wide decarbonization. Despite these multi-faceted advantages familiar and proven FCH technologies such as alkaline electrolysis and proton-exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) often face economic technical and societal barriers to mass-market adoption. There is no single unified standardized and globally harmonized normative definition of costs. Nevertheless the discussion and debates surrounding plausible candidates and/or constituents integral for assessing the economics and value proposition of status-quo as well as developmental FCH technologies are steadily increasing—Life Cycle Costing (LCC) being one of them if not the most important outcome of such exercises.<br/>To that end this review article seeks to improve our collective understanding of LCC of FCH technologies by scrutinizing close to a few hundred publications drawn from representative databases—SCOPUS and Web of Science encompassing several tens of technologies for production and select transportation storage and end-user utilization cases. This comprehensive review forms part of and serves as the basis for the Clean Hydrogen Partnership funded SH2E project whose ultimate goal is the methodical development a formal set of principles and guardrails for evaluating the economic environmental and social impacts of FCH technologies. Additionally the SH2E projects will also facilitate the proper comparison of different FCH technologies whilst reconciling range of technologies methodologies modelling assumptions and parameterization found in existing literature.

Assessing the sustainable development of green hydrogen and assessing its potential environmental impacts using the Life Cycle Assessment is crucial. Challenges in LCA like missing environmental data are often addressed using machine learning such as artificial neural networks. However to find an ML solution researchers need to read extensive literature or consult experts. This research demonstrates how customised LLMs trained with domain-specific papers can help researchers overcome these challenges. By starting small by consolidating papers focused on the LCA of proton exchange membrane water electrolysis which produces green hydrogen and ML applications in LCA. These papers are uploaded to OpenAI to create the LlamaIndex enabling future queries. Using the LangChain framework researchers query the customised model (GPT-3.5-turbo) receiving tailored responses. The results demonstrate that customised LLMs can assist researchers in providing suitable ML solutions to address data inaccuracies and gaps. The ability to quickly query an LLM and receive an integrated response across relevant sources presents an improvement over manually retrieving and reading individual papers. This shows that leveraging fine-tuned LLMs can empower researchers to conduct LCAs more efficiently and effectively.

The measurement of hydrogen concentration in fuel cell systems is an important prerequisite for the development of a control strategy to enhance system performance reduce purge losses and minimize fuel cell aging effects. In this perspective paper the working principles of hydrogen sensors are analyzed and their requirements for hydrogen control in fuel cell systems are critically discussed. The wide measurement range absence of oxygen high humidity and limited space turn out to be most limiting. A perspective on the development of hydrogen sensors based on palladium as a gas-sensitive metal and based on the organic magnetic field effect in organic lightemitting devices is presented. The design of a test chamber where the sensor response can easily be analyzed under fuel cell-like conditions is proposed. This allows the generation of practical knowledge for further sensor development. The presented sensors could be integrated into the end plate to measure the hydrogen concentration at the anode in- and outlet. Further miniaturization is necessary to integrate them into the flow field of the fuel cell to avoid fuel starvation in each single cell. Compressed sensing methods are used for more efficient data analysis. By using a dynamical sensor model control algorithms are applied with high frequency to control the hydrogen concentration the purge process and the recirculation pump.

Over 35% of the CO2 associated with cement production comes from operational energy. The cement industry needs alternative fuels to meet its net zero emissions target. This study investigated the influence of hydrogen mixed with biofuels herein designated net zero fuel as an alternative to coal on the clinker quality and performance of cement produced in an industrial cement plant. Scanning electron microscopy X-ray diffraction and nuclear magnetic resonance were coupled to study the clinker mineralogy and polymorphs. Hydration and microstructure development in plain and slag blended cements based on the clinker were compared to commercial cement equivalent. The results revealed a lower alite/belite ratio but a significant proportion of the belite was of the α’H-C2S polymorph. These reacted faster and compensated for the alite/belite ratio. Gel and micro-capillary pores were densified which reduced total porosity and attained comparable strength to the reference plain and blended cement. This study demonstrates that the investigated net zero fuel-produced clinker meets compositional and strength requirements for plain and blended cement providing a feasible pathway for the cement industry to lower its operational carbon significantly.

The global green hydrogen rush is prone to repeat extractivist patterns at the expense of economies ecologies and communities in the production zones in the Global South. With a socio-ecological risk analysis grounded in energy water and environmental justice scholarship we systematically assess the risks of the ‘green’ hydrogen transition and related injustices arising in 28 countries in the Global South with regard to energy water land and global justice dimensions. Our findings show that risks materialize through the exclusion of affected communities and civil society the enclosure of land and resources for extractivist purposes and through the externalization of socio-ecological costs and conflicts. We further demonstrate that socio-ecological risks are enhanced through country-specific conditions such as water scarcity historical continuities such as post-colonial land tenure systems as well as repercussions of a persistently uneven global politico-economic order. Contributing to debates on power inequality and justice in the global green hydrogen transition we argue that addressing hydrogen risks requires a framework of environmental justice and a transformative perspective that encompasses structural shifts in the global economy including degrowth and a decentering of industrial hegemonies in the Global North.

The import of hydrogen and derivatives forms part of many national strategies and is fundamental to achieving climate protection targets. This paper provides an overview and technical comparison of import pathways for hydrogen and derivatives in terms of efficiency technological maturity and development and construction times with a focus on the period up to 2030. The import of hydrogen via pipeline has the highest system efficiency at 57–67 % and the highest technological maturity with a technology readiness level (TRL) of 8–9. The import of ammonia and methanol via ship and of SNG via pipeline shows efficiencies in the range of 39–64 % and a technological maturity of TRL 7 to 9 when using point sources. Liquid hydrogen LOHC and Fischer-Tropsch products have the lowest efficiency and TRL in comparison. The use of direct air capture (DAC) reduces efficiency and TRL considerably. Reconversion of the derivatives to hydrogen is also associated with high losses and is not achievable for all technologies on an industrial scale up to 2030. In the short to medium term import routes for derivatives that can utilise existing infrastructures and mature technologies are the most promising for imports. In the long term the most promising option is hydrogen via pipelines.

The need to reduce the carbon footprint of conventional energy sources has made green hydrogen a promising solution for the energy transition. The most environmentally friendly way to produce hydrogen is through water-based production using renewable energy. However the availability of fresh water is limited so switching to wastewater instead of fresh water is the key solution to this problem. In response to this issue the present review reports the main findings of the research studies dealing with the feasibility of hydrogen production from wastewater using various technologies including biological electrochemical and advanced oxidation routes. These methods have been studied in a large number of experiments with the aim of investigating and improving the potential of each method. On the other hand the maturity of solar energy technologies has led researchers to focus on the possibility of harnessing this source and combining it with wastewater treatment techniques for the production of green hydrogen. Therefore the present review pays special attention to solar driven hydrogen production from wastewater by highlighting the potential of several technologies for simultaneous water treatment and green hydrogen production from wastewater. Recent results limitations challenges possible improvements and techno-economic assessments reported by several authors as well as future directions of research and industrial implementation in this field are reported.

The defossilization of industry has far-reaching implications regarding the future demand for hydrogen and other forms of energy. This paper presents and applies a fundamental bottom-up model that relies on techno-economic data of industrial production processes. Its aim is to identify across a range of scenarios the most cost-effective low-carbon options considering a variety of production systems. Subsequently it derives the hydrogen and electricity demand that would result from the implementation of these least-cost low-carbon options in process industries in Germany. Aligning with the German government's target year for achieving climate neutrality this study’s reference year is 2045. The primary contribution lies in analyzing which hydrogen-based and direct electrification solutions would be cost-effective for a range of energy price levels under climate-neutral industrial production and what the resulting hydrogen and electricity demand would be. To this end the methodology of this paper comprises the following steps: selection of the relevant industries (I) definition of conventional reference production systems and their low-carbon options (II) investigation and processing of the techno-economic data of the standardized production systems (III) establishment of a scenario framework (IV) determination of the least-cost low-carbon solution of a conventional reference production system under the scenario assumptions made (V) and estimation of the resulting hydrogen and electricity demand (VI). According to the results the expected industrial hydrogen consumption in 2045 ranges from 255 TWh for higher hydrogen prices in or above the range of onshore wind-based green hydrogen supply costs to up to 542 TWh for very low hydrogen prices corresponding to typical blue hydrogen production costs. Meanwhile the direct electricity consumption of the process industries in the results ranges from 122 TWh for these rather low hydrogen prices to 368 TWh for the higher hydrogen prices in the region of or above the hydrogen supply costs from the electrolysis of energy from an onshore wind farm. Most of the break-even hydrogen prices that are relevant to the choice of low-carbon options are in the range of the benchmark purchase costs for blue hydrogen and green hydrogen produced from offshore wind power which span between €40 per MWh and €97 per MWh.