Investigating the technical feasibility of various energy carriers for alternative and sustainable overseas energy transport scenarios

The technological barriers against energy transport includes low energy density, intermittent supply and immobility of the energy sources. A potential and sustainable solution to overcome these barriers is to use an effective and efficient energy carrier which can store, transport and distribute energy in a technically feasible manner. Therefore, this study presents five potential energy carriers for overseas energy transport; liquifed natural gas (LNG), dimethyl ether (DME), liquid ammonia, methanol and liquid hydrogen which are used to carry the energy of natural gas in liquefied form from a supplied region to a demanded region. During the supply chain of the energy carriers, the amount of boil-off gas (BOG) for each energy carrier is calculated. A sensitivity analysis affecting BOG rates is implemented under variety of parameters, namely; ambient temperature, storage pressure, land storage time, ocean transportation time, heel percentage and pumping time. This study shows that the daily BOG rates for LNG, DME, ammonia, methanol, and hydrogen are calculated as 0.471%, 0.159%, 0.129%, 0.049%, and 3.438%, respectively. Methanol delivers the greatest mass, DME delivers the greatest energy and hydrogen loses the greatest mass as BOG during the supply chain. The highest BOG generation mainly occurs during ocean transportation phase, implying that ocean transportation time is the most critical parameter among the studied parameters.