Italy

A study was performed to investigate the hydrogen embrittlement behavior of 18-Ni 300 maraging steel produced by selective laser melting and subjected to different heat treatment strategies. Hydrogen was pre-charged into the tensile samples by an electro-chemical method at the constant current density of 1 A m−2 and 50 A m−2 for 48 h at room temperature. Charged and uncharged specimens were subjected to tensile tests and the hydrogen concentration was eventually analysed using quadrupole mass spectroscopy. After tensile tests uncharged maraging samples showed fracture surfaces with dimples. Conversely in H-charged alloys quasi-cleavage mode fractures occurred. A lower concentration of trapped hydrogen atoms and higher elongation at fracture were measured in the H-charged samples that were subjected to solution treatment prior to hydrogen charging compared to the as-built counterparts. Isothermal aging treatment performed at 460 °C for 8 h before hydrogen charging increased the concentration of trapped hydrogen giving rise to higher hydrogen embrittlement susceptibility.

In order to reduce CO₂ emissions and fuel consumption and to respect current environmental norms the reduction of vehicles weight is a primary target of the automotive industry. Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) and Ultra High Strength Steel (UHSS) which present excellent mechanical properties are consequently increasingly used in vehicle manufacturing. The increased strength to mass ratio compensates the higher cost per kg and AHSS and UHSS are proving to be cost-effective solutions for the body-in-white of mass market products.

In particular aluminized boron steel can be formed in complex shapes with press hardening processes acquiring high strength without distortion and increasing protection from crashes. On the other hand its characteristic martensitic microstructure is sensitive to hydrogen delayed fracture phenomena and at the same time the dew point in the furnace can produce hydrogen consequently to the high temperature reaction between water and aluminum. The high temperature also promotes hydrogen diffusion through the metal lattice under the aluminum-silicon coating thus increasing the diffusible hydrogen content. However after cooling the coating acts as a strong barrier preventing the hydrogen from going out of the microstructure. This increases the probability of delayed fracture. As this failure brings to the rejection of the component during production or even worse to the failure in its operation diffusible hydrogen absorbed in the component needs to be monitored during the production process.

For fast and simple measurements of the response to diffusible hydrogen of aluminized boron steel one of the HELIOS innovative instruments was used HELIOS II. Unlike the Devanathan cell that is based on a double electrochemical cell HELIOS II is based on a single cell coupled with a solid-state sensor. The instrument is able to give an immediate measure of diffusible hydrogen content in sheet steels semi-products or products avoiding time-consuming specimen palladium coating with a guided procedure that requires virtually zero training.

Two examples of diffusible hydrogen analyses are given for Usibor®1500-AS one before hot stamping/ quenching and one after hot stamping suggesting that the increase in the number of dislocations during hot stamping could be the main responsible for the lower apparent diffusivity of hydrogen.

Various Pt-based materials (unsupported Pt PtRu PtCo) were investigated as catalysts for recombining hydrogen and oxygen back into water. The recombination performance correlated well with the surface Pt metallic state. Alloying cobalt to platinum was observed to produce an electron transfer favouring the occurrence of a large fraction of the Pt metallic state on the catalyst surface. Unsupported PtCo showed both excellent recombination performance and dynamic behaviour. In a packed bed catalytic reactor when hydrogen was fed at 4% vol. in the oxygen stream (flammability limit) 99.5% of the total H2 content was immediately converted to water in the presence of PtCo thus avoiding safety issues. The PtCo catalyst was thus integrated in the anode of the membrane-electrode assembly of a polymer electrolyte membrane electrolysis cell. This catalyst showed good capability to reduce the concentration of hydrogen in the oxygen stream under differential pressure operation (1–20 bar) in the presence of a thin (90 μm) Aquivion® membrane. The modified system showed lower hydrogen concentration in the oxygen flow than electrolysis cells based on state-of-the-art thick polymer electrolyte membranes and allowed to expand the minimum current density load down to 0.15 A cm−2 . This was mainly due to the electrochemical oxidation of permeated H2 to protons that were transported back to the cathode. The electrolysis cell equipped with a dual layer PtCo/IrRuOx oxidation catalyst achieved a high operating current density (3 A cm−2 ) as requested to decrease the system capital costs under high efficiency conditions (about 77% efficiency at 55 °C and 20 bar). Moreover the electrolysis system showed reduced probability to reach the flammability limit under both high differential pressure (20 bar) and partial load operation (5%) as needed to properly address grid-balancing service

The hydrogen vector stands as a potentially important tool to achieve the decarbonization of the energy sector. It represents an option to store the periodic excesses of energy generation from renewable electrical sources to be used as it is as a substitute for fossil fuels in some applications or reconverted into electricity when needed. In this context hydrogen can significantly decarbonize the building sector as an alternative fuel for gas-driven devices. Along with hydrogen the European strategic vision indicates the electrification of heat among the main energy transition pathways. The potential environmental benefits achievable from renewable hydrogen in thermally-driven appliances and the electrification of residential heat through electric heat pumps were evaluated and compared in this work. The novelty of the research consists of a consequential comparative life cycle assessment (16 impact categories) evaluation for three buildings (old old retrofitted and new) supplied by three different appliances (condensing boiler gas absorption heat pump and electric heat pump) never investigated before. The energy transition was evaluated for 2020 and 2030 scenarios considering the impact of gaseous fuels (natural gas and European green hydrogen) and electricity based on the pathway of the European electricity grid (27 European member states plus the United Kingdom). The results allowed to compare the environmental profile in deterministic and stochastic approaches and confirm if the increase of renewables reduces the impact in the operational phase of the appliances. The results demonstrate that despite the increased renewable share the use phase remains the most significant for both temporal scenarios contributing to 91% of the environmental profile. Despite the higher footprint in 2020 compared to the electric heat pump (198–200 vs. 170–196 gCO2eq/kWhth) the gas absorption heat pump offered a lower environmental profile than the others in all the scenarios analyzed.

Hydrogen as the energy carrier of the future’ has been a topic discussed for decades and is today the subject of a new revival especially driven by the investments in renewable electricity and the technological efforts done by high-developed industrial powers such as Northern Europe and Japan. Although hydrogen production from renewable resources is still limited to small scale local solutions and R&D projects; steam reforming (SR) of natural gas at industrial scale is the cheapest and most used technology and generates around 8 kg CO2 per kg H2. This paper is focused on the process optimization and decarbonization of H2 production from fossil fuels to promote more efficient approaches based on membrane separation. In this work two emerging configurations have been compared from the numerical point of view: the membrane reactor (MR) and the reformer and membrane module (RMM) proposed and tested by this research group. The rate of hydrogen production by SR has been calculated according to other literature works a one-dimensional model has been developed for mass heat and momentum balances. For the membrane modules the rate of hydrogen permeation has been estimated according to mass transfer correlation previously reported by this research group and based on previous experimental tests carried on in the first RMM Pilot Plant. The methane conversion carbon dioxide yield temperature and pressure profile are compared for each configuration: SR MR and RMM. By decoupling the reaction and separation section such as in the RMM the overall methane conversion can be increased of about 30% improving the efficiency of the system.

New technological solutions are required to control the impact of the increasing presence of renewable energy sources connected to the electric grid that are characterized by unpredictable production (i.e. wind and solar energy). Energy storage is becoming essential to stabilize the grid when a mismatch between production and demand occurs. Among the available solutions Power to Hydrogen (P2H) is one of the most attractive options. However despite the potential many barriers currently hinder P2H market development. The literature reports general barriers and strategies to overcome them but a specific analysis is fundamental to identifying how these barriers concretely arise in national and regional frameworks since tailored solutions are needed to foster the development of P2H local market. The paper aims to identify and to analyze the existing barriers for P2H market uptake in Italy. The paper shows how several technical regulatory and economic issues are still unsolved resulting in a source of uncertainty for P2H investment. The paper also suggests possible approaches and solutions to address the Italian barriers and to support politics and decision-makers in the definition and implementation of the national hydrogen strategy.

The need to significantly reduce emissions from the steelmaking sector requires effective and ready-to-use technical solutions. With this aim different decarbonization strategies have been investigated by both researchers and practitioners. To this concern the most promising pathway is represented by the replacement of natural gas with pure hydrogen in the direct reduced iron (DRI) production process to feed an electric arc furnace (EAF). This solution allows to significantly reduce direct emissions of carbon dioxide from the DRI process but requires a significant amount of electricity to power electrolyzers adopted to produce hydrogen. The adoption of renewable electricity sources (green hydrogen) would reduce emissions by 95–100% compared to the blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace (BF–BOF) route. In this work an analytical model for the identification of the minimum emission configuration of a green energy–steel system consisting of a secondary route supported by a DRI production process and a renewable energy conversion system is proposed. In the model both technological features of the hydrogen steel plant and renewable energy production potential of the site where it is to be located are considered. Compared to previous studies the novelty of this work consists of the joint modeling of a renewable energy system and a steel plant. This allows to optimize the overall system from an environmental point of view considering the availability of green hydrogen as an inherent part of the model. Numerical experiments proved the effectiveness of the model proposed in evaluating the suitability of using green hydrogen in the steelmaking process. Depending on the characteristics of the site and the renewable energy conversion system adopted decreases in emissions ranging from 60% to 91% compared to the BF–BOF route were observed for the green energy–steel system considered It was found that the environmental benefit of using hydrogen in the secondary route is strictly related to the national energy mix and to the electrolyzers’ technology. Depending on the reference context it was found that there exists a maximum value of the emission factor from the national electricity grid below which is environmentally convenient to produce DRI by using only hydrogen. It was moreover found that the lower the electricity consumption of the electrolyzer the higher the value assumed by the emission factor from the electricity grid which makes the use of hydrogen convenient.

Fuel cell technologies have several applications in stationary power production such as units for primary power generation grid stabilization systems adopted to generate backup power and combined-heat-and-power configurations (CHP). The main sectors where stationary fuel cells have been employed are (a) micro-CHP (b) large stationary applications (c) UPS and IPS. The fuel cell size for stationary applications is strongly related to the power needed from the load. Since this sector ranges from simple backup systems to large facilities the stationary fuel cell market includes few kWs and less (micro-generation) to larger sizes of MWs. The design parameters for the stationary fuel cell system differ for fuel cell technology (PEM AFC PAFC MCFC and SOFC) as well as the fuel type and supply. This paper aims to present a comprehensive review of two main trends of research on fuel-cell-based poly-generation systems: tracking the market trends and performance analysis. In deeper detail the present review will list a potential breakdown of the current costs of PEM/SOFC production for building applications over a range of production scales and at representative specifications as well as broken down by component/material. Inherent to the technical performance a concise estimation of FC system durability efficiency production maintenance and capital cost will be presented.

Interest in hydrogen fuel is growing for automotive applications; however safe dense solid-state hydrogen storage remains a formidable scientific challenge. Metal hydrides offer ample storage capacity and do not require cryogens or exceedingly high pressures for operation. However hydrides have largely been abandoned because of oxidative instability and sluggish kinetics. We report a new environmentally stable hydrogen storage material constructed of Mg nanocrystals encapsulated by atomically thin and gas-selective reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets. This material protected from oxygen and moisture by the rGO layers exhibits exceptionally dense hydrogen storage (6.5 wt% and 0.105 kg H₂ per litre in the total composite). As rGO is atomically thin this approach minimizes inactive mass in the composite while also providing a kinetic enhancement to hydrogen sorption performance. These multilaminates of rGO-Mg are able to deliver exceptionally dense hydrogen storage and provide a material platform for harnessing the attributes of sensitive nanomaterials in demanding environments.

Hydrogen is considered a promising energy carrier for a sustainable future when it is produced by utilizing renewable energy. Nowadays less than 4% of hydrogen production is based on electrolysis processes. Each component of a hydrogen energy system needs to be optimized to increase the operation time and system efficiency. Only in this way hydrogen produced by electrolysis processes can be competitive with the conventional fossil energy sources. As conventional electrolysers are designed for operation at fixed process conditions the implementation of fluctuating and highly intermittent renewable energy is challenging. Alkaline water electrolysis is a key technology for large-scale hydrogen production powered by renewable energy. At low power availability conventional alkaline water electrolysers show a limited part-load range due to an increased gas impurity. Explosive mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen must be prevented; thus a safety shutdown is performed when reaching specific gas contamination. The University of Pisa is setting up a dedicated laboratory including a 40-kW commercial alkaline electrolyser: the focus of the study is to analyze the safety of the electrolyser together with its performance and the real energy efficiency analyzing its operational data collected under different operating conditions affected by the unstable energy supply.

Hydrogen production using anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) offers hope to the energy crisis faced by humanity. AEM electrolysis can be coupled with intermittent and renewable energy sources as well as with the use of low-cost electrocatalysts and other low-cost stack components. In AEM water electrolysis one of the biggest advantages is the use of low-cost transition metal catalysts instead of traditional noble metal electrocatalysts. AEMWE is still in its infancy despite irregular research on catalysts and membranes. In order to generate commercially viable hydrogen AEM water electrolysis technology must be further developed including energy efficiency membrane stability stack feasibility robustness ion conductivity and cost reduction. An overview of studies that have been conducted on electrocatalysts membranes and ionomers used in the AEMWEs is here reported with the aim that AEMWE research may be made more practical by this review report by bridging technological gaps and providing practical research recommendations leading to the production of scalable hydrogen.

Globally climate change fossil fuel depletion and greenhouse emissions are fundamental problems requiring massive effort from the international scientific community to be addressed and solved. Following the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package (CEP) guidelines the Italian Government has established challenging and tight objectives both on energy and climate matter to be targeted by 2030. Accordingly research activities on different topics are carried out in Italy looking at the installation of intermittent renewable energy systems (IRES) implementation of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) on existing power plants and hydrogen technology and infrastructure penetration for accomplishing the end-users demands. The optimal integration of the above-mentioned technologies is one of the most effective weapons to address these objectives. The paper investigates different energy scenarios for meeting the Italian National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) 2030 targets showing how the combined implementation of around +12 GW of IRES and +6 GW of electrolyzers compared to the national estimates simultaneously with the CCS of around 10 Mt of CO2 per year can reduce the CO2 emissions up to about 247 Mt/year. Thanks to the adoption of the well-established software platform EnergyPlan the integration of IRES plants CCS and hydrogen-based technologies have been explored and the most successful results for concurrently reducing the impact of industrial transport residential and energy sectors and mitigating the greenhouse emissions substantially relies on the diversifications. Results show both the technical and economic convenience of a 2030 energy scenario which implements properly hydrogen IRES and CCS penetration in the energy system meeting the NECP 2030 targets and maintaining both the over-generation of the power plants below 5 TWh and the initial capital expenditure to be sustained for this scenario to occur below +80% compared to the 2019 energy scenario.

Micro-mobility plays an increasingly important role in the current energy transition thanks to its low energy consumption and reduced contribution to urban congestion. In this scenario fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles have several advantages over state-of-the-art battery electric vehicles such as increased driving ranges and reduced recharge times. In this paper we study the conversion of a commercial electric moped (Askoll eS3 ®) into a fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle by finding the optimal design of the components through an optimization methodology based on backward dynamic programming. This optimal design and operation strategy can also be implemented with a rulesbased approach. The results show that a system composed of a 1 kW proton exchange membrane fuel cell a 2000 Sl metal hydride hydrogen tank and a 240 Wh buffer battery can cover the same driving range as the batteries in an electric moped (119 km). Such a hybrid system occupies considerably less volume (almost 40 L) and has a negligibly higher mass. The free volume can be used to extend the driving range up to almost three times the nominal value. Moreover by using a high-pressure composite tank it is possible to increase the mass energy density of the onboard energy storage (although compression can require up to 10% of the hydrogen’s chemical energy). The fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle can be recharged with green hydrogen that is locally produced. In detail we analyze a residential scenario and a shared mobility scenario in the small Italian city of Viterbo.

Through the integration of multiple energy carriers with related technologies multi-energy systems (MES) can exploit the synergies coming from their interplay for several benefits towards decarbonization. In such a context inclusion of Power-to-X technologies in periods of excess renewable electricity supply removes the need for curtailment of renewable electricity generation. In order to achieve the environmental benefits of MES without neglecting their economic feasibility the optimal design problem is as crucial as challenging and requires the adoption of a multi-objective approach. This paper extends the results of a previous work by investigating hydrogen-based non-conventional storage for PV power in the eco-energetic optimization of an MES. The system under study consists of a reversible fuel cell (r-SOC) photovoltaic (PV) electric heat pump absorption chiller and thermal storage and allows satisfying the multi-energy needs of a residential end-user. A multi-objective linear problem is established to find the optimal MES configuration including the sizes of the involved technologies with the goal of reducing the total annual cost and the fossil primary energy input. Simulation results are compared with those obtained in previous work with a conventional nanogrid where a combined heat and power (CHP) system with gas-fired internal combustion engine and a battery were present instead of an r-SOC. The optimized configuration of the non-conventional nanogrid allows achieving a maximum primary energy reduction amounting to 66.3% compared to the conventional nanogrid. In the face of the environmental benefits the non-conventional nanogrid leads to an increase in total annual costs which compared to the conventional nanogrid is in the range of 41–65%.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the factors affecting hydrogen and Carbon Capture and Storage Technologies (“CCS”) policies taking into consideration Fossil Fuel Consumption Oil Reserves the Debt/GDP Ratio the Trilemma Index and other variables with respect to OECD countries. STATA 17 was used for the analysis. The results confirm the hypothesis that countries with high fossil fuel consumption and oil reserves are investing in blue hydrogen and CCS towards a “zero-carbon-emission” perspective. Moreover countries with a good Debt/GDP ratio act most favorably to green policies by raising their Public Debt because Foreign Direct Investments are negatively correlated with those kinds of policies. Future research should exploit Green Finance policy decision criteria on green and blue hydrogen.

Integrated steelworks off-gases are generally exploited to produce heat and electricity. However further valorization can be achieved by using them as feedstock for the synthesis of valuable products such as methane and methanol with the addition of renewable hydrogen. This was the aim of the recently concluded project entitled “Intelligent and integrated upgrade of carbon sources in steel industries through hydrogen intensified synthesis processes (i3 upgrade)”. Within this project several activities were carried out: from laboratory analyses to simulation investigations from design development and tests of innovative reactor concepts and of advanced process control to detailed economic analyses business models and investigation of implementation cases. The final developed methane production reactors arerespectively an additively manufactured structured fixedbed reactor and a reactor setup using wash-coated honeycomb monoliths as catalyst; both reactors reached almost full COx conversion under slightly over-stoichiometric conditions. A new multi-stage concept of methanol reactor was designed commissioned and extensively tested at pilot-scale; it shows very effective conversion rates near to 100% for CO and slightly lower for CO2 at one-through operation for the methanol synthesis. Online tests proved that developed dispatch controller implements a smooth control strategy in real time with a temporal resolution of 1 min and a forecasting horizon of 2 h. Furthermore both offline simulations and cost analyses highlighted the fundamental role of hydrogen availability and costs for the feasibility of i 3 upgrade solutions and showed that the industrial implementation of the i 3 upgrade solutions can lead to significant environmental and economic benefits for steelworks especially in case green electricity is available at an affordable price.

The aim of the paper is to analyze how regulatory design and its framework’s topics other than macroeconomic factors might impact green innovation by taking into consideration a brand-new renewable source of energy that is becoming more and more important in recent years: hydrogen and fuel cell patenting activities. Such activities have been used as a proxy for green technological change in a panel data of 52 countries over a 6-year period. A series of sectorial energy regulation and macroeconomic variables were tested to assess their impact on that technological frontier of green energy transition policy. As might have been expected the empirical analysis carried out with the model that was prefigured confirms significant evidence of lock-in effects on fossil fuel policies. The model confirms however another evidence: countries already investing in renewables might be willing to invest in hydrogen projects. A sort of reinforcement to the further development of green sustainable strategies seems to derive from having already concretely undertaken this direction. Future research should exploit different approaches to the research question and address the econometric criticalities mentioned in the paper along with exploiting results of the paper with further investigations.

Hydrogen has the potential to act as the energy carrier of the future. It will be then produced in large amounts and will certainly need to be transported for long distances. The safest way to transport hydrogen is through pipelines. Failure of pipelines carrying gaseous hydrogen can have several effects some of which can pose a significant threat of damage to people and buildings in the immediate proximity of the failure location. This paper presents a probabilistic risk assessment procedure for the estimation of damage to people and buildings endangered by high-pressure hydrogen pipeline explosions. The procedure provides evaluation of annual probability of damage to people and buildings under an extreme event as a combination of the conditional probability of damage triggered by an explosion and the probability of occurrence of the explosion as a consequence of the pipeline failure. Physical features such as the gas jet release process flammable cloud size blast generation and explosion effects on people and buildings are considered and evaluated through the SLAB integral model TNO model Probit equations and Pressure-Impulse diagrams. For people both direct and indirect effects of overpressure events are considered. For buildings a comparison of the damage to different types of buildings (i.e. reinforced concrete buildings and tuff stone masonry buildings) is made. The probabilistic procedure presented may be used for designing a new hydrogen pipeline network and will be an advantageous tool for safety management of hydrogen gas pipelines.

A water electrolysis cell based on anion exchange membrane (AEM) and critical raw materials-free (CRM-free) electrocatalysts was developed. A NiFe-oxide electrocatalyst was used at the anode whereas a series of metallic electrocatalysts were investigated for the cathode such as Ni NiCu NiMo NiMo/KB. These were compared to a benchmark Pt/C cathode. CRMs-free anode and cathode catalysts were synthetized with a crystallite size of about 10 nm. The effect of recirculation through the cell of a diluted KOH solution was investigated. A concentration of 0.5–1 M KOH appeared necessary to achieve suitable performance at high current density. amongst the CRM-free cathodes the NiMo/KB catalyst showed the best performance in the AEM electrolysis cell achieving a current density of 1 A cm− 2 at about 1.7–1.8 V/cell when it was used in combination with a NiFe-oxide anode and a 50 µm thick Fumatech FAA-3–50® hydrocarbon membrane. Durability tests showed an initial decrease of cell voltage with time during 2000 h operation at 1 A cm− 2 until reaching a steady state performance with an energy efficiency close to 80%. An increase of reversible losses during start-up and shutdown cycles was observed. Appropriate stability was observed during cycled operation between 0.2 and 1 A cm− 2 ; however the voltage efficiency was slightly lower than in steady-state operation due to the occurrence of reversible losses during the cycles. Post operation analysis of electrocatalysts allowed getting a better comprehension of the phenomena occurring during the 2000 h durability test.

Sustainable Development Goals establish the main challenges humankind is called to tackle to assure equal comfort of living worldwide. Among these the access to affordable renewable energy and clean water are overriding especially in the context of developing economies. Reversible Solid Oxide Cells (rSOC) are a pivotal technology for their sector-coupling potential. This paper aims at studying the implementation of such a technology in new concept PV-hybrid energy storage mini-grids with close access to seawater. In such assets rSOCs have a double useful effect: charge/discharge of the bulk energy storage combined with seawater desalination. Based on the outcomes of an experimental proof-of-concept on a single cell operated with salty water the operation of the novel mini-grid is simulated throughout a solar year. Simulation results identify the fittest mini-grid configuration in order to achieve energy and environmental optimization hence scoring a renewable penetration of more than 95% marginal CO2 emissions (13 g/kWh) and almost complete coverage of load demand. Sector-coupling co-production rate (desalinated water versus electricity issued from the rSOC) is 0.29 L/kWh.

The competitiveness of biofuels may be increased by integrating biomass gasification plants with electrolysis units which generate hydrogen to be combined with carbon-rich syngas. This option allows increasing the yield of the final product by retaining a higher amount of biogenic carbon and improving the resilience of the energy sector by favoring electric grid services and sector coupling. This article illustrates a techno-economic comparative analysis of three flexible power and biomass to methanol plants based on different gasification technologies: direct gasification indirect gasification and sorptionenhanced gasification. The design and operational criteria of each plant are conceived to operate both without green hydrogen addition (baseline mode) and with hydrogen addition (enhanced mode) following an intermittent use of the electrolysis system which is turned on when the electricity price allows an economically viable hydrogen production. The methanol production plants include a gasification section syngas cleaning conditioning and compression section methanol synthesis and purification and heat recovery steam cycle to be flexibly operated. Due to the high oxygen demand in the gasifier the direct gasification-based plant obtains a great advantage to be operated between a minimum load to satisfy the oxygen demand at high electricity prices and a maximum load to maximize methanol production at low electricity prices. This allows avoiding large oxygen storages with significant benefits for Capex and safety issues. The analysis reports specific fixed-capital investments between 1823 and 2048 €/kW of methanol output in the enhanced operation and LCOFs between 29.7 and 31.7 €/GJLHV. Economic advantages may be derived from a decrease in the electrolysis capital investment especially for the direct gasification-based plants which employ the greatest sized electrolyzer. Methanol breakeven selling prices range between 545 and 582 €/t with the 2019 reference Denmark electricity price curve and between 484 and 535 €/t with an assumed modified electricity price curve of a future energy mix with increased penetration of intermittent renewables.

This paper describes the implementation of a hydrogen-based system for an autonomous surface vehicle in an effort to reduce environmental impact and increase driving range. In a suitable computational environment the dynamic electrical model of the entire hybrid powertrain consisting of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell a hydrogen metal hydride storage system a lithium battery two brushless DC motors and two control subsystems is implemented. The developed calculation tool is used to perform the dynamic analysis of the hybrid propulsion system during four different operating journeys investigating the performance achieved to examine the obtained performance determine the feasibility of the work runs and highlight the critical points. During the trips the engine shows fluctuating performance trends while the energy consumption reaches 1087 Wh for the fuel cell (corresponding to 71 g of hydrogen) and 370 Wh for the battery consuming almost all the energy stored on board.

The Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan promotes among its many actions the use of hydrogen by the deployment of refuelling stations for heavy-duty vehicles predicting a 5–7% penetration rate of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) for long-distance freight transport. In this work the impact of this action on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and consumption was estimated assuming the plan’s objectives are met. To achieve this aim a national simulation model of the road freight transport system was implemented consisting of a graph of the national road network and an inter-provincial origin-destination matrix; the graph was based on data available from OpenStreetMap while the interprovincial matrix was estimated from the interregional matrix with the use of two linear regression models one for emitted goods and one for attracted goods. The simulation of the system made it possible to estimate the impact of this action on CO2 emissions and fuel consumption under three different scenarios. From 2025 to 2040 a reduction in CO2 emissions ranging from around 9 to around 16.5 million tonnes was estimated and a reduction in consumption ranging from around 3 billion to around 5.6 billion litres of diesel. These results show how this action can be seen as one of the bricks contributing to the fight against global warming.

This paper aims to present a pre-feasibility study of a power-to-fuel plant configuration designed for the production of 500 kg/h of renewable methanol (e-methanol) from green hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is obtained by water electrolysis employing the overproduction of renewable electricity. Carbon dioxide is assumed to be separated from the flue gas of a conventional power station by means of an amine-based CO2 absorption system. A comprehensive process model has been developed with the support of Aspen Plus tool to simulate all the plant sections and the overall system. After the process optimization a detailed economic analysis – based on capital and operating costs derived from commercial-scale experience and assuming a 20- year lifetime – has been performed to calculate a levelized cost of methanol (LCoM) of 960 €/t (about 175 €/MWh). The analysis confirms that today the technology is still not competitive from the economic point of view being LCoM more than double than the current methanol price in the international market (450 €/t). However it indicates that the process is expected to become competitive in a mid-term future as a consequence of the new European policies. The study also reveals that LCoM is mainly affected by the electricity price and the electrolyser capital cost as well as the capacity factor of the plant.

Nowadays nearly one quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions are attributable to energy use in industry making this an important target for emission reductions. The scope of this study is hence that to define a cost-optimized decarbonization strategy for an energy and carbon intensive industry using an Italian refinery as a case study. The methodology involves the coupling of EnergyPLAN with a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) considering the minimization of annual cost and CO2 emissions as two potentially conflicting objectives and the energy technologies’ capacities as decision variables. For the target year 2025 EnergyPLAN+MOEA has allowed to model a range of 0-100 % decarbonization solutions characterized by optimal penetration mix of 22 technologies in the electrical thermal hydrogen feedstock and transport demand. A set of nine scenarios with different land use availabilities and implementable technologies each consisting of 100 optimal systems out of 10000 simulated ones has been evaluated. The results show on the one hand the possibility of achieving medium-high decarbonization solutions at costs close to current ones on the other how the decarbonization pathways strongly depend on the available land for solar thermal photovoltaic and wind as well as the presence of a biomass supply chain in the region.