Sustainable assessment of solar hydrogen production techniques

This study addresses some technical issues related to solar hydrogen production methods. In this regard, exergy-based environmental and sustainability parameters are applied to an electrolysis process for hydrogen production. Accordingly, the environmental destruction index is found to be 0.16 while exergetic benign index is calculated as 6.30. While the exergy efficiency increases from 10 to 90%, the sustainability index rises from 0.01 to 8.1. Thus, solar hydrogen production should be used for practical applications because of higher exergetic sustainability potential and lower environmental destruction index.

► Environmental and sustainability parameters were applied to an electrolysis process of PV-based hydrogen production system.
► While the exergy efficiency increased from 10 to 90%, the sustainability index rose from 0.01 to 8.1.
► The environmental benign index increased from 0.11 to 9 while the environmental destruction index decreased from 9 to 0.11.