LOHC & Hydrogen System Economics

Materials and systems work only matters commercially if the economics pencil out, and that’s where a lot of my non-lab work sits: translating catalyst and reactor decisions into cost-per-kilogram-of-hydrogen numbers that can be compared across technology options, rather than treating techno-economic analysis as an afterthought bolted onto a finished technical result. Two threads run through this case, tied together by that lens.

The first is a liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) thread. LOHCs store hydrogen by chemically binding it to a liquid molecule at one site and releasing it by catalytic dehydrogenation at another — a route that lets hydrogen move through existing liquid-fuel infrastructure instead of requiring new cryogenic or high-pressure handling. My contribution here was on the catalysis side: designing mechanism-verification experiments and providing XPS surface characterization for platinum-based dehydrogenation catalysts, looking at how promoter atoms and catalyst structure change the reaction pathway and the rate at which hydrogen is released.

The second is a techno-economic assessment (TEA) capability that runs across several projects rather than sitting inside a single paper. I’ve used the HDSAM (Hydrogen Delivery Scenario Analysis Model) framework to assess hydrogen refueling station economics, carried out a techno-economic assessment of the compressor stage in a high-pressure hydrogen system — the compressor techno-economic assessment contribution is detailed in Sodium Borohydride for Hydrogen Mobility & Compression— and run levelized cost analyses to compare competing system designs on a common cost basis.