Great Britain's Energy Vectors and Transmission Level Energy Storage

As an example of the challenges facing many developed countries, the scale of daily energy flows through Great Britain's electrical, gas and transport systems are presented. When this data is expressed graphically it illustrates important differences in the demand characteristics of these different vectors; these include the scale of energy delivered through the networks on a daily basis, and the scale of variability in the different demands over multiple timescales (seasonal, weekly and daily). The paper discusses energy storage in general; the scale of within day stores of energy available to the gas and electrical transmission networks, and suggests Synthetic Natural Gas as an interesting energy carrier that could use existing natural gas infrastructure

The role of hydrogen and fuel cells in the global energy system

Hydrogen technologies have experienced cycles of excessive expectations followed by disillusion. Nonetheless, a growing body of evidence suggests these technologies form an attractive option for the deep decarb onisation of global energy systems, and that recent improvements in their cost and performance point towards economic viability as well. This paper is a comprehensive review of the potential role that hydrogen could play in the provision of electricity, h eat, industry, transport and energy storage in a low - carbon energy system, and an assessment of the status of hydrogen in being able to fulfil that potential. The picture that emerges is one of qualified promise: hydrogen is well established in certain nic hes such as forklift trucks, while mainstream applications are now forthcoming. Hydrogen vehicles are available commercially in several countries, and 225,000 fuel cell home heating systems have been sold. This represents a step change from the situation of only five years ago. This review shows that challenges around cost and performance remain, and considerable improvements are still required for hydrogen to become truly competitive. But such competitiveness in the medium - term future no longer seems an unrealistic prospect, which fully justifies the growing interest and policy support for these technologies around the world

Techno-economic assessment of an integrated bio-oil steam reforming and hydrodeoxygenation system for polygeneration of hydrogen, chemicals, and combined heat and power production

The utilization of bio-oil could be an attractive option in the future, attributed to its high bulk energy density and ease of transportation. However, the primary challenge in promoting the commercialization of technologies using bio-oil is high capital investment and operating costs. The key to resolve this challenge is to maximize the value of products that can be extracted from bio-oil through realizing a flexible, multiple product generation and integrated system configuration, known as polygeneration system. In this study, an integrated bio-oil steam reforming and hydrodeoxygenation (BOSR-HDO) system, with simultaneous production of hydrogen, chemicals, heat, and power, is proposed. A systematic design framework was adopted in the present case for maximizing resource utilization and hence the economic potential of the system. The system has shown a positive economic potential (i.e., £120 million/year) at a bio-oil cost of £166/t. On the other hand, the netback of bio-oil, i.e., the maximum acceptable market price, was determined to be £301.9/t (£19.4/GJ). The study has also demonstrated that the adoption of heat integration strategy could improve the economic potential of the BOSR-HDO system by 24.6% (i.e., £29 million/year). Furthermore, the study has recommended that the utilization of excess hydrogen in the HDO process should be limited below a hydrogen-to-oil ratio of 4.3 for an economically viable processing