Techno-economic assessment of low-carbon hydrogen exports from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific, and Europe

Hydrogen has the potential to play a major role in the global energy mix in the future and to achieve carbon-neutral targets by 2050. However, there is a lack of studies that investigate the economic feasibility of blue-hydrogen export from natural gas exporting countries, especially from the Middle East. Therefore, this study presents a techno-economic assessment of hydrogen production and transportation from the Middle East to Asia-Pacific and European countries. Two different pathways were assessed; liquefied hydrogen (LH₂) and ammonia (NH₃) starting from hydrogen production (from natural gas with carbon capture) to the distribution stage. Additionally, the effectiveness of the proposed-optimistic improvements for LH₂-pathway is presented. Results show that based on current hydrogen liquefaction/storage technologies, the overall levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) for LH₂-pathway (5.17$/kg-H₂) is higher than NH₃-pathway (4.76$/kg-H₂) by 8.61% at 600 tons/day and 14,000 km shipping distance. Furthermore, the LCOH of the improved LH₂ pathway (4.46$/kg-H₂) is still higher than of the improved NH₃ pathway (4.03$/kg-H₂) by 10.7%. This implies that the overseas transportation of hydrogen as ammonia is more economically feasible than of the LH₂ option.