Optimal Dynamic Strategy of Building a Hydrogen Infrastructure in Beijing

Proceedings of the 4th Annual Asia Pacific Conference on Transportation and the Environment This paper describes the on-going Hydrogen Infrastructure Transition (HIT) modeling efforts with the Beijing case study. HIT uses dynamic programming to generate optimal decisions on when, where, at what sizes and by what technologies to build up a regional hydrogen infrastructure while minimizing the discounted value of facility cost, environmental disbenefit and travel time disbenefit. In the case study, we use the 380-kilometer Beijing urban expressway network for spatial representation and 2010~2060 as the transition study period. We relied on Beijing Master Plan, demographic projection and traffic data in estimating spatial distribution and temporal growth of hydrogen demand. Gaseous fueling station, natural gas steam reforming onsite, water electrolysis onsite, water electrolysis central plant, coal gasification central plant (with and without carbon dioxide sequestration), tanker truck and pipeline are identified as the 8 potential technologies to be selected by the optimization algorithm. The dynamic optimization algorithm of the HIT model incorporates station citing and sizing, pipeline length and flowrate, station module expansion, onsite-to-refueling-only switch, sequestration upgrade, technology evolvement, and availability of by-product hydrogen. Based on the data assumption, we find that $2.5 billion (in 2010 worth) is the minimum cost for Beijing to transition to an equilibrium hydrogen infrastructure of 2 coal gasification plants, 350km pipeline and 100 refueling stations. The revenues can breakeven all the costs if hydrogen is charged to the consumers at $2.15/kgH2 from 2010 to 2060 and $0.95/kgH2 after 2060.