2017 Volume 96 Issue 8 Pages 266-272
The environmental performance of hydrogen production via indirect gasification of Blue Tower including the use phase by a fuel cell (FC) cell phone was evaluated following a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Foreground data for this study were provided mainly from process simulation in consideration of the adsorption and gasification experiments. Also, the problems in the whole system were clarified, and the countermeasures for them were proposed. In the production phase, it is necessary to reduce the auxiliary power by the installation of 2-step pressure swing adsorption (2-step PSA) unit and remove the contaminants of H2S. Here, it found that H2S would be able to be entirely removed at the storage. In the use phase, sufficient H2 storage capacity and stable power supply of a FC device, which has poor load-following operation due to large over-potentials, are absolutely required in order to meet various demands. Based on the specification of a FC-cell phone with electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), the Life Cycle CO2 (LCCO2) emission was estimated. Bio-H2 was generally found to be a promising hydrogen fuel, with reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Especially, the negative emission had significantly impact even if the direct emission was small in comparison with the direct one.