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Title:

Spatially Explicit Economic Assessment of Hydrogen from Waste Biomass: California Case Study with Rice Straw

Accession Number:

01029682

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

The success of hydrogen as an environmentally friendly transportation fuel will depend on the proportion of hydrogen that is produced from renewable resources in a sustainable manner. This paper examines the economics of hydrogen from agricultural residues. Hydrogen is produced from agricultural residues by gasification of the feedstock. Earlier studies have shown that the cost of hydrogen from biomass gasification is strongly dependent on the cost of the feedstock. Due to the low energy density of agricultural residues and their dispersed nature, transportation costs constitute a large fraction of their delivered cost. Hydrogen also suffers from high transport costs. Using a case study of rice straw in California’s Central Valley, this paper examines the effect the location and size of the conversion facility has on the cost of hydrogen. The cost of feedstock transport is calculated using GIS data on the location of rice fields. The cost of hydrogen delivery is calculated using GIS data representing a scenario of hydrogen demand equivalent to a 10% penetration of fuel cell vehicles in the current vehicle market. Four sites were chosen that would minimize the combined transportation cost at different facility sizes. Levelized cost curves were developed for these four sites. This study finds that hydrogen from rice straw costs less than $3.00 per kg at the refueling station. The location of the facility is very important, at the same capacity the sites varied by as much as $0.73 per kg of hydrogen.

Monograph Accession #:

01020180

Report/Paper Numbers:

06-1716

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Parker, Nathan

Pagination:

12p

Publication Date:

2006

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 85th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2006-1-22 to 2006-1-26
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

CD-ROM

Features:

Figures (7) ; References; Tables (9)

Uncontrolled Terms:

Renewable resources; Rice straw

Geographic Terms:

California

Subject Areas:

Economics; Energy; Environment; Highways; I15: Environment

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2006 Paper #06-1716

Files:

TRIS, TRB

Created Date:

Mar 3 2006 10:46AM