Thailand

A single-bed and dual-bed catalyst system was studied to maximize H2 production from the combination of partial oxidation of CH4 and water gas shift reaction. In addition the different types of catalysts including Ni Cu Ni-Re and Cu-Re supported on gadolinium-doped ceria (GDC) were investigated under different operating conditions of temperature (400–650 ◦C). Over Ni-based catalysts methane can easily dissociate on a Ni surface to give hydrogen and carbon species. Then carbon species react with lattice oxygen of ceria-based material to form CO. The addition of Re to Ni/GDC enhances CH4 dissociation on the Ni surface and increases oxygen storage capacity in the catalyst thus promoting carbon elimination. In addition the results showed that a dual-bed catalyst system exhibited catalytic activity better than a single-bed catalyst system. The dual-bed catalyst system by the combination of 1%Re4%Ni/GDC as a partial oxidation catalyst and 1%Re4%Cu/GDC as a water gas shift catalyst provided the highest CH4 conversion and H2 yield. An addition of Re onto Ni/GDC and Cu/GDC caused an increase in catalytic performance because Re addition could improve the catalyst reducibility and increase metal surface area as more of their surface active sites are exposed to reactants.

While Afghanistan’s power sector is almost completely dependent on fossil fuels it still cannot meet the rising power demand of this country. Deploying a combination of renewable energy systems with hydrogen production as the excess energy storage mechanism could be a sustainable long-term approach for addressing some of the energy problems of Afghanistan. Since Badakhshan is known to have a higher average wind speed than any other Afghan province in this study a technical economic and carbon footprint assessment was performed to investigate the potential for wind power and hydrogen production in this province. Wind data of four stations in Badakhshan were used for technical assessment for three heights of 10 30 and 40 m using the Weibull probability distribution function. This technical assessment was expanded by estimating the energy pattern factor probability of wind speeds greater than 5 m/s wind power density annual power output and annual hydrogen output. This was followed by an economic assessment which involved computing the Leveled Cost Of Energy (LCOE) the Leveled Cost Of Hydrogen (LCOH) and the payback period and finally an carbon footprint assessment which involved estimating the consequent CO2 reduction in two scenarios. The assessments were performed for 22 turbines manufactured by reputable companies with capacities ranging from 600 kW to 2.3 MW. The results showed that the entire Badakhshan province and especially Qal’eh-ye Panjeh and Fayazabad have excellent potentials in terms of wind energy that can be harvested for wind power and hydrogen production. Also wind power generation in this province will be highly cost-effective as the produced electricity will cost about one-third of the price of electricity supplied by the government. For better evaluation the GIS maps of wind power and hydrogen outputs were prepared using the IDW method. These maps showed that the eastern and northeastern parts of Badakhshan province have higher wind power-hydrogen production potentials. The results of ranking the stations with SWARA-EDAS hybrid MCDM methods showed that Qal’eh-ye Panjeh station was the best location to produce hydrogen from wind energy.

This study describes the optimization of a modelling process concerning biogas’ use to generate green hydrogen and electrical power. The Aspen Plus simulation tool is used to model the procedure and the approach employed to limit the emissions of gas from the hydrogen production process will be the CO2 capture method. This technique uses slack lime (Ca(OH)2) to absorb CO2 capture since it is readily available. The study analyzes many critical parameters in the process including the temperature and pressure in the steam reforming (SR) and the water gas shift (WGS) reactions along with the steam to carbon ratio (S/C) to determine how the production of green hydrogen and electrical power will be influenced. Electricity generation is achieved by taking the residual water from the SR WGS carbonation reactions and converting it to the vapour phase allowing the steam to pass through the turbine to generate electricity. To examine the effects of the synchronized critical parameters response surface methodology (RSM) was used thus allowing the optimal operational conditions to be determined in the form of an optimized zone for operation. The result of parameter optimization gave the maximum green hydrogen production of 211.46 kmol/hr and electric power production of 2311.68 kWh representing increases of 34.86% and 5.62% respectively when using 100 kmol/hr of biogas. In addition control structures were also built to control the reactors’ temperature in the dynamic section. The tuning parameters can control the SR and WGS system’s reactor to maintain the system in approximately 0.29 h and 0.32 h respectively.

This article proposes a novel open-circuit switch fault diagnosis method (FDM) for a three-level interleaved buck converter (TLIBC) in a hydrogen production system based on the water electrolysis process. The control algorithm is suitably modified to ensure the same hydrogen production despite the fault. The TLIBC enables the interfacing of the power source (i.e. low-carbon energy sources) and electrolyzer while driving the hydrogen production of the system in terms of current or voltage. On one hand the TLIBC can guarantee a continuity of operation in case of power switch failures because of its interleaved architecture. On the other hand the appearance of a power switch failure may lead to a loss of performance. Therefore it is crucial to accurately locate the failure in the TLIBC and implement a fault-tolerant control strategy for performance purposes. The proposed FDM relies on the comparison of the shape of the input current and the pulse width modulation (PWM) gate signal of each power switch. Finally an experimental test bench of the hydrogen production system is designed and realized to evaluate the performance of the developed FDM and fault-tolerant control strategy for TLIBC during post-fault operation. It is implemented with a real-time control based on a MicroLabBox dSPACE (dSPACE Paderborn Germany) platform combined with a TI C2000 microcontroller. The obtained simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed FDM can detect open-circuit switch failures in one switching period and reconfigure the control law accordingly to ensure the same current is delivered before the failure.