Techno-economic evaluation of an integrated hydrogen and power co-generation system with CO2 capture

• A techno-economic model is used to evaluate hydrogen and power co-generation system with CO2 capture.
• Sensitivity of hydrogen and CO2 avoidance costs to natural gas and electricity prices are investigated.
• In the studied cases, power co-generation and CO2 capture reduce the hydrogen production efficiency by a few percent.
• In the hydrogen and power co-generation system, CO2 avoidance cost is significantly lower than in power plants.

An integrated hydrogen and power co-generation system with CO2 capture has been proposed and evaluated techno-economically. The proposed system is an alternative low cost clean power generation while supplying hydrogen for process plants. The baseline configuration has been designed based on the literature. Different cases are simulated in Aspen Plus and are evaluated economically. Thermodynamic models have been validated against the results of previous publications. The co-generation system with different product shares of hydrogen and power has been compared with CO2 captured and CO2-vented hydrogen plants by means of defined techno-economic-environmental indicators. Sensitivity analysis has been carried out for input parameters of natural gas and electricity prices. The simulation results demonstrate that in CO2 capture studied cases, system total efficiency is slightly greater (1–1.5%) in co-generation cases than in hydrogen only production case with electricity importing from natural gas combined cycle and CO2 venting. Economic evaluation results indicate that although hydrogen cost increases with power co-generation (5–8%), the CO2 avoidance cost is significantly lower than in power plants alone (73–83% lower).