Hydrogen Supply Chain for Future Hydrogen-fuelled Railway in the UK: Transport Sector Focused

Though being attractive on railway decarbonisation for regional lines, excessive cost caused by immature hydrogen supply chain is one of the significant hurdles for promoting hydrogen traction to rolling stocks. Therefore, we conduct bespoke research on the UK’s hydrogen supply chain for railway, concentrating on hydrogen transportation. Firstly, a map for the planned hydrogen production plants and potential hydrogen lines is developed with the location, capacity, and usage. A spatially explicit model for the hydrogen supply chain is then introduced, which optimises the existing grid-based methodology on accuracy and applicability. Compressed hydrogen at three pressures, and liquid hydrogen are considered as the mediums, incorporating by road and rail transport. Furthermore, three scenarios for hydrogen rail penetration are simulated respectively to discuss the levelised cost and the most suitable national transport network. The results show that the developed model with mix-integer linear programming (MILP) can well design the UK’s hydrogen distribution for railway traction. Moreover, the hydrogen transport medium and vehicle should adjust to suit for different era where the penetration of hydrogen traction varies. The levelised cost of hydrogen (LCOH) decreases from 6.13 £/kg to 5.13 £/kg on average from the conservative scenario to the radical scenario. Applying different transport combinations according to the specific situation can satisfy the demand while reducing cost for multi-supplier and multitargeting hydrogen transport.