IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v16y2024i15p6437-d1444326.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Replacing Gray Hydrogen with Renewable Hydrogen at the Consumption Location Using the Example of the Existing Fertilizer Plant

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Dumančić

    (Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Rijeka, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia)

  • Nela Vlahinić

    (Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Rijeka, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia)

  • Minea Skok

    (Energy Institute Hrvoje Požar, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia)

Abstract

The production and use of hydrogen are encouraged by the European Union through Delegated Acts, especially in sectors that are difficult to decarbonize, such as the industrial and transport sectors. This study analyzes the possibility of partial decarbonization of the existing plant in the petrochemical industry, with a partial transition from natural gas to renewable hydrogen, as a precursor to the adoption of the hydrogen economy by 2050. This study was based on the example of a plant from the petrochemical industry, namely an existing fertilizer plant. Namely, in the petrochemical industry, hydrogen is produced by steam-reforming natural gas, which is needed in the process of producing ammonia, one of the basic raw materials for mineral fertilizers. By building an electrolyzer at the location of the existing fertilizer plant, it is possible to obtain renewable hydrogen, which enters the ammonia production process as a raw material. The electricity from which hydrogen is produced in the electrolyzer is provided through Power Purchase Agreement contracts concluded with electricity producers from 12 wind power plants. The results of this study show that the production of renewable hydrogen at the location of the analyzed plant is not profitable, but due to the specificity of the process of such an industry, the high consumption of natural gas, and large savings in CO 2 emissions which can be achieved by the production of renewable hydrogen, investment is needed. With a 370 MW electrolyzer, about 31,000 tons of renewable hydrogen is produced, which represents about 50% of the hydrogen needs of the analyzed plant. By producing renewable hydrogen for part of the needs of the analyzed plant, a saving of about 300,000 tons of CO 2 emissions is achieved in relation to the production of gray hydrogen, which contributes to the partial decarbonization of the analyzed plant. The authors are aware that the current market opportunities do not allow the profitability of the investment without subsidies, but with the advancement of technology and a different price ratio of electricity, natural gas, and CO 2 emissions, they believe that such investments will be profitable even without subsidies.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Dumančić & Nela Vlahinić & Minea Skok, 2024. "Replacing Gray Hydrogen with Renewable Hydrogen at the Consumption Location Using the Example of the Existing Fertilizer Plant," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(15), pages 1-33, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:15:p:6437-:d:1444326
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/15/6437/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/15/6437/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Langenmayr, Uwe & Ruppert, Manuel, 2023. "Renewable origin, additionality, temporal and geographical correlation – eFuels production in Germany under the RED II regime," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    2. Ioannou, Anastasia & Fuzuli, Gulistiani & Brennan, Feargal & Yudha, Satya Widya & Angus, Andrew, 2019. "Multi-stage stochastic optimization framework for power generation system planning integrating hybrid uncertainty modelling," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 760-776.
    3. Moradpoor, Iraj & Syri, Sanna & Santasalo-Aarnio, Annukka, 2023. "Green hydrogen production for oil refining – Finnish case," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    4. Perpiñán, Jorge & Bailera, Manuel & Peña, Begoña & Romeo, Luis M. & Eveloy, Valerie, 2023. "Technical and economic assessment of iron and steelmaking decarbonization via power to gas and amine scrubbing," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 276(C).
    5. Kountouris, Ioannis & Langer, Lissy & Bramstoft, Rasmus & Münster, Marie & Keles, Dogan, 2023. "Power-to-X in energy hubs: A Danish case study of renewable fuel production," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    6. Bareiß, Kay & de la Rua, Cristina & Möckl, Maximilian & Hamacher, Thomas, 2019. "Life cycle assessment of hydrogen from proton exchange membrane water electrolysis in future energy systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 237(C), pages 862-872.
    7. Ma, Qian & Chang, Yuan & Yuan, Bo & Song, Zhaozheng & Xue, Jinjun & Jiang, Qingzhe, 2022. "Utilizing carbon dioxide from refinery flue gas for methanol production: System design and assessment," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 249(C).
    8. Mikovits, Christian & Wetterlund, Elisabeth & Wehrle, Sebastian & Baumgartner, Johann & Schmidt, Johannes, 2021. "Stronger together: Multi-annual variability of hydrogen production supported by wind power in Sweden," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 282(PB).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arkadiusz Małek & Andrzej Marciniak, 2025. "Operational Analysis of Power Generation from a Photovoltaic–Wind Mix and Low-Emission Hydrogen Production," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-25, May.
    2. Juan Taumaturgo Medina Collana & Luis Carrasco-Venegas & Carlos Ancieta-Dextre & Oscar Rodriguez-Taranco & Denis Gabriel-Hurtado & Jorge Montaño-Pisfil & Cesar Rodriguez-Aburto & Wilmer Chávez-Sánchez, 2025. "Analysis of the Main Hydrogen Production Technologies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-30, September.
    3. Ahmed Eltweri & Wa’el Al-karaki & Yuan Zhai & Khadijah Abdullah & Alessio Faccia, 2024. "UK Hydrogen Roadmap: Financial and Strategic Insights into Oil and Gas Industry’s Transition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-31, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrea Dumančić & Nela Vlahinić Lenz & Lahorko Wagmann, 2024. "Profitability Model of Green Hydrogen Production on an Existing Wind Power Plant Location," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(4), pages 1-23, February.
    2. Andrea Dumančić & Nela Vlahinić Lenz & Goran Majstrović, 2023. "Can Hydrogen Production Be Economically Viable on the Existing Gas-Fired Power Plant Location? New Empirical Evidence," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-20, April.
    3. Sayed-Ahmed, H. & Toldy, Á.I. & Santasalo-Aarnio, A., 2024. "Dynamic operation of proton exchange membrane electrolyzers—Critical review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 189(PA).
    4. Förster, Robert & Eiser, Niklas & Kaiser, Matthias & Buhl, Hans Ulrich, 2025. "Leveraging synergies for energy-flexible operated electrolysis: A techno-economic analysis of power purchase agreement procurement with battery energy storage systems for renewable hydrogen production," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 393(C).
    5. S. Safari & Farbod Esmaeilion & A. Rabanian & D. H. Jamali & S. Negi & S. Hoseinzadeh & F. Sayedin & S. S. Bhoglla & M. El. Haj Assad & B. Das & M. A. Ehyaei & A. Ahmadi & M. Soltani & Hamed Afshari, 2025. "Sustainable hydrogen production through water splitting: a comprehensive review," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 27(8), pages 17887-17926, August.
    6. Seck, Gondia Sokhna & Hache, Emmanuel & D'Herbemont, Vincent & Guyot, Mathis & Malbec, Louis-Marie, 2023. "Hydrogen development in Europe: Estimating material consumption in net zero emissions scenarios," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    7. Negar Shaya & Simon Glöser-Chahoud, 2024. "A Review of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Studies for Hydrogen Production Technologies through Water Electrolysis: Recent Advances," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(16), pages 1-21, August.
    8. Ali Dargahi & Khezr Sanjani & Morteza Nazari-Heris & Behnam Mohammadi-Ivatloo & Sajjad Tohidi & Mousa Marzband, 2020. "Scheduling of Air Conditioning and Thermal Energy Storage Systems Considering Demand Response Programs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-13, September.
    9. Taslimi, Melika & Khosravi, Ali, 2025. "Flexibility and profitability in power-to-methanol plants: Integrating storage solutions and reserve market participation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 327(C).
    10. Kang, Jidong & Wu, Zhuochun & Ng, Tsan Sheng & Su, Bin, 2023. "A stochastic-robust optimization model for inter-regional power system planning," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 310(3), pages 1234-1248.
    11. Bidart, Christian & Wichert, Martin & Kolb, Gunther & Held, Michael, 2022. "Biogas catalytic methanation for biomethane production as fuel in freight transport - A carbon footprint assessment," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    12. Galusnyak, Stefan Cristian & Petrescu, Letitia & Chisalita, Dora Andreea & Cormos, Calin-Cristian, 2022. "Life cycle assessment of methanol production and conversion into various chemical intermediates and products," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    13. Pantò, Fabiola & Siracusano, Stefania & Briguglio, Nicola & Aricò, Antonino Salvatore, 2020. "Durability of a recombination catalyst-based membrane-electrode assembly for electrolysis operation at high current density," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    14. Govind Joshi & Salman Mohagheghi, 2021. "Optimal Operation of Combined Energy and Water Systems for Community Resilience against Natural Disasters," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-19, September.
    15. Ajanovic, Amela & Sayer, Marlene & Haas, Reinhard, 2024. "On the future relevance of green hydrogen in Europe," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 358(C).
    16. Koponen, Joonas & Ruuskanen, Vesa & Hehemann, Michael & Rauls, Edward & Kosonen, Antti & Ahola, Jero & Stolten, Detlef, 2020. "Effect of power quality on the design of proton exchange membrane water electrolysis systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    17. Alessandro Lima & Jorge Torrubia & Alicia Valero & Antonio Valero, 2025. "Non-Renewable and Renewable Exergy Costs of Water Electrolysis in Hydrogen Production," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(6), pages 1-24, March.
    18. Qin, Peijia & Tan, Xianlin & Huang, Youbin & Pan, Mingming & Ouyang, Tiancheng, 2023. "Two-stage robust optimal scheduling framework applied for microgrids: Combined energy recovery and forecast," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 290-306.
    19. Ratanakuakangwan, Sudlop & Morita, Hiroshi, 2021. "Hybrid stochastic robust optimization and robust optimization for energy planning – A social impact-constrained case study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 298(C).
    20. Fadhil Y. Al-Aboosi & Mahmoud M. El-Halwagi, 2019. "A Stochastic Optimization Approach to the Design of Shale Gas/Oil Wastewater Treatment Systems with Multiple Energy Sources under Uncertainty," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-39, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:15:p:6437-:d:1444326. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.