Onshore hydrogen production from boil-off gas (BOG) via natural gas steam reforming process: Process simulation and techno-economic analysis

Abstract

Growing demand for cleaner energy resources has led to the increased global production of liquefied natural gas (LNG). At the same time, there are some economic and environmental impacts from LNG evaporation forming the boil-off gas (BOG) during production, storage, loading, transportation, and unloading. This study presents the technical and economic aspects of BOG utilization to a value-added hydrogen product (H2) at LNG exporting terminals using a steam reforming production process. The steady-state process simulation using Aspen HYSYS software achieves an overall C1+ process conversion of 100% with an H2 gas product purity of 99.99%. Heat integration between the recycle stream and the final purification section presents 12% energy savings. Additionally, the process revealed production costs as low as $0.23/kg of H2 produced, which is competitive with production from resources such as coal and natural gas. The low cost enabled the investigation of three monetization pathways: direct H2 sales to domestic markets, liquefied H2 sales to international markets, and ammonia sales to international markets. The production profitability of H2 sales as the liquefied H2 product shows the highest NPV of $66.2 billion for a project with a lifetime of 25 years and an interest rate of 10%. These approaches empower decision-makers to diversify selling portfolios in the LNG industry and support the transition to H2 using existing infrastructure.