Feasibility study of a Hydrogen Refuelling Station for Inland Waterways ships: Seine river case study (H2SHIPS project)

The maritime transport industry contributes to almost 3% of the global CO2 emissions. In particular, the Inland Waterway transport is a critical sector since it also impacts on the local pollution of many European cities, among which Paris, that over the past few years has pledged to phase out petrol-powered mobility by 2030, investing in electric and hydrogen vehicles. In this context, the objective of this master thesis, was to develop a feasibility study of a Hydrogen Refuelling Station to refuel mainly hydrogen powered Inland Waterways ships in the Seine river, in the framework of the Interreg North-West Europe H2SHIPS project. In particular, the final Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (including production and delivery), the total plant investment and operational costs, the yearly electric energy demand and the plant footprint were calculated for three significative case studies. To perform the sizing and cost optimization of the HRS components related to the hydrogen delivery, the well-know HDRSAM tool, from Argonne National Laboratory (US Department of Energy research center) was used, making some adjustments and integrating it with a model, built from scratch, for the hydrogen production side calculations (Electrolyzer sizing, costs and footprint calculations). A sensitivity analysis follows, to identify the main cost drivers of the LCOH and select the most economically and technically viable scenario for a possible future installation in Paris. From the analysis turns out that the a HRS designed for just 1-2 ships fillings per day (Scenario 3) is not economically recommended, since the low daily hydrogen demand and the relatively high peak hourly demand make the hydrogen really expensive. On the contrary, a multimodal HRS (Scenario 1) can guarantee an higher utilization of the facility, refuelling not just ships but also road heavy duty vehicles, resulting in a lower hydrogen cost. In general the higher is the HRS daily capacity, the lower is the resultant hydrogen cost, even though the capex increases (Scenario 2). While the lower is the hourly hydrogen demand peak (a flatter hydrogen demand distribution during the day) the lower will be the hydrogen cost, because we have a smaller size of the most critical and expensive components: the compressor and the cascade high pressure storage.