Which of the technologies for producing hydrogen is the most prospective in Korea?: Evaluating the competitive priority of those in near-, mid-, and long-term

In order to evaluate the alternative technologies for producing hydrogen in Korea stage by stage, we searched for impact factors, calculated the weights of them and evaluated the hydrogen production technologies in Korea using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach. The AHP is a useful method for resolving multi-criteria decision making problems. We investigated 4 criteria (technical characteristics, economic efficiency, marketability, internal capability) and 11 sub-criteria (scale, efficiency, key barriers, carbon dioxide reduction, current production cost, expected production cost in 2017, feed-stock, technical maturity, R&D competitive level, technology gap with competing agencies, and domestic infrastructure). And the alternatives are natural gas reforming technology, coal gasification technology, biomass gasification technology, water electrolysis technology, thermochemical production technology, photoelectrochemical hydrogen production technology, and biological hydrogen production technology. In order to maintain the objectivity of the analysis result and observe the difference among the groups, the questionnaire survey targets were divided into the R&D professional group and policy professional group. This result of study is expected to serve as important basic information in the establishment of a national R&D strategy to prepare for the imminent hydrogen economy era.