An economic evaluation on the purification and storage of waste hydrogen for the use of fuel cell scooters

ABSTRACT

Safe and reliable metal hydride canisters (MHCs) for the use of hydrogen storage at low pressure can be applied to supply small fuel cell vehicles or scooters with hydrogen fuel. However, greater cost-effectiveness of hydrogen gas is obviously necessary to the successful promotion of hydrogen fuel cell scooters in the market. In this study, we use the net present value (NPV) method to evaluate the feasibility of an investment project on the supply of purified hydrogen in a pulp company at Hualien, Taiwan. The purified hydrogen can be separated from waste hydrogen by using pressure swing adsorption (PSA) technology and then be stored in MHCs. Under some assumptions of improved parameters about hydrogen production cost and hydrogen gas price, the discounted payback period of hydrogen purification and storage project in our study can be less than 10 years and the unit cost of hydrogen gas can be close to the price of gasoline. Moreover, the unit cost of hydrogen gas in our study can be lower than the cost from other sources of hydrogen.

KEYWORDS:

• Discounted payback period
• fuel cell scooter
• metal hydride canister
• net present value
• pressure swing adsorption
• waste hydrogen

Acknowledgments

We are immensely grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their positive comments and useful suggestions on an earlier version of the article. All errors are our own.

Funding

This research was supported by the Bureau of Energy, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan (103-D0714).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Bureau of Energy, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan (103-D0714).