Techno-economic assessment of low-carbon hydrogen exports from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific, and Europe

Hydrogen has the potential to play a major role in the global energy mix in the future and to achieve carbon-neutral targets by 2050. However, there is a lack of studies that investigate the economic feasibility of blue-hydrogen export from natural gas exporting countries, especially from the Middle East. Therefore, this study presents a techno-economic assessment of hydrogen production and transportation from the Middle East to Asia-Pacific and European countries. Two different pathways were assessed; liquefied hydrogen (LH2) and ammonia (NH3) starting from hydrogen production (from natural gas with carbon capture) to the distribution stage. Additionally, the effectiveness of the proposed-optimistic improvements for LH2-pathway is presented. Results show that based on current hydrogen liquefaction/storage technologies, the overall levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) for LH2-pathway (5.17$/kg-H-2) is higher than NH3-pathway (4.76$/kg-H-2) by 8.61% at 600 tons/day and 14,000 km shipping distance. Furthermore, the LCOH of the improved LH2 pathway (4.46$/kg-H-2) is still higher than of the improved NH3 pathway (4.03$/kg-H-2) by 10.7%. This implies that the overseas transportation of hydrogen as ammonia is more economically feasible than of the LH2 option.