Systematic assessment for an integrated hydrogen approach towards the cross-regional application considering solar thermochemical and methanol carrier11The short version of the paper was presented at CUE2023. This paper is a substantial extension of the short version of the conference paper

Hydrogen holds promise as a clean energy carrier, but its industrial utilization is currently constrained by the challenges of green production and efficient cross-regional delivery. To this end, a novel integrated hydrogen energy system considering the solar-driven biomass gasification and liquid organic hydrogen storage was developed in this work. In the newly developed system, the collected high-temperature solar thermal energy is used to drive biomass gasification, and the produced syngas is then directed into methanol synthesis reaction. The unreacted syngas from methanol synthesis and the released waste heat are utilized by a Brayton-Rankine combined cycle for power generation. At the terminal side of hydrogen consumption, the mid/low-temperature solar thermochemical technology is adopted, and the produced methanol as the hydrogen carrier is thus decomposed to release the required hydrogen. The thermodynamic and economic evaluation models are developed to comprehensively investigate the system performances, and a designed annual biomass gasification processing capacity scenario of 153.0 ktons in China is implemented for the case study. The results indicate that the on-design energy and exergy efficiencies of the system reach 52.9% and 46.7%, respectively. Based on the elemental migration analysis, 51.3% of hydrogen element will be exported as the gaseous hydrogen, and only 21.4% of carbon is finally dissipated into the environment. According to the off-design evaluation during a typical year, the annual production rates of the hydrogen and electricity reach 11.2 ktons and 20.3 GWh, and the solar thermochemistry modules occupy the main initial investment. The research findings provide a promising approach for the efficient utilization of abundant solar energy and biomass energy resources.