Hydrogen Delivery to the Curb. Case Study of Hydrogen and Derivatives Imports from Australia to Customers in Central Germany

PtX imports have been analyzed in many studies. But, in nearly all cases only transport to the coast is analyzed. But understanding the delivery to the end customer is important as many customers either require some derivative of hydrogen (i.e., NH3 for fertilizer production, MeOH for chemical processes) or are not directly connected to a hydrogen grid. The additional costs for the delivery to curb might then have an impact on the choice of the preferred PtX product or on investment decisions. Therefore, we will present the findings of a case study for inland transport. We will start with giving a brief overview about the state of research in international supply chains for hydrogen and PtX. After that we will present results from a PtX import study from Australia to German. Hereby our focus will lie on a case study for the inland transport of different PtX products from Rotterdam to off-takers in Germany. To analyze costs for inland transport we use a detailed temporally and spatially resolved techno-economic model including optimization. The model calculates the shortest routes for all non-pipeline-based modes of transport (road, train, inland waterway vessel) as well as the required time of transport and uses that data to do a techno-economic simulation and optimization to find minimum transport costs possible while supplying the off-takers demand at all times. The optimization can change the dimensioning of storage, the number of vessel / vehicles and the number of containers / tank wagons loaded. It can therefore - among other aspects - optimize the trade-off between a higher transport volume per vessel and higher storage volume at the destination. The cases we show in our study are transport of LH2 to an airport in Bremen (400 – 490km, ~10 kt/a), Ammonia to Chemical industry at Ludwigshafen (470 - 570km; supply of 25% of its demand = 225 kt of Ammonia per year) and Methanol to a refinery at Gelsenkirchen (215 – 250km; supply of 75% of its demand = 210 kt per year). All transport routes originate at the port of Rotterdam. The results show that the cheapest mode of LH2-transport to Bremen is via a Tanker vessel reaching inland transport costs of ~ 0.14 €/kg of Hydrogen. Compared to the total import costs of 7.3 €/kg from Australia in 2030 these are 1.9% of the overall import costs. The results also show a clear cost degression over scale and that for quantities below 2.500 t/a road-based transport will be the best option to supply this specific location. For the Ammonia and Methanol cases tanker vessels are also the cheapest option leading to costs at these cases of 9.7 €/t (Ammonia) and 5.4 €/t (Methanol). Compared to the total costs of the imports these are only 0.9% and 0.5% of the overall import costs. In general, transportation via tanker vessel represents the most cost-effective option once a certain annual threshold of PtX product demand at the target destination has been reached. If transport via inland water vessels is not possible the next best option for MeOH and NH3 is transport via train. In the case of LH2 costs for transport via truck and train are nearly the same, with transport via truck trailer being the most cost-efficient option. For LH2 the maximum transport capacity on trains and trucks is limited by the maximum volume of the LH2 storage tank. Due to higher energy densities that is not the case for Methanol and Ammonia. Resulting in a higher transport weight via train and therefore cheaper transport costs for both PtX products. In general, it can be concluded that inland transport is important to be analyzed when deciding on the supply of a specific destination or off-taker or when looking at small volumes. But it will not have a major impact on the big picture of future energy and PtX trade.