Proposal, design, and cost analysis of a hydrogen production process from cellulose via supercritical water gasification

Hydrogen production from biomass, a renewable resource, has been attracting attention in recent years. We conduct a detailed process design for cellulose-derived hydrogen production via glucose using supercritical water gasification technology. Gasification of biomass in supercritical water offers advantages over conventional biomass conversion methods, including high gasification efficiency, elevated hydrogen molar fractions, and the minimization of drying process for wet biomass. In the process design, a continuous tank reactor is employed because the reaction in the glucose production process involves solids, and using a tube-type reactor may clog the reactor with solids. In the glucose separation process, glucose and levulinic acid, which cannot be separated by boiling point difference, are separated by using an extraction column. In the hydrogen separation process, the hydrogen purity, which could not be sufficiently increased with a single pressure swing adsorption (PSA) process, is increased to the target value by employing two sets of PSA columns. The overall utility cost is significantly reduced by $0.020/mol-H-2 through heat integration. Our economic evaluation for this process results in a deficit of $0.015/mol-H-2, as a price to be paid by the human for renewable hydrogen production from biomass at the present stage. By simply adopting the reported experimental condition, our process contains a large amount of water and sulfuric acid, which requires an enormous cost for the neutralizer, drying utility, and extractant. To improve the economic performance of the process, it is necessary to consider the reaction of cellulose solution at a higher concentration to reduce the burden of glucose separation. In addition, the effective use of the wasted hydrogen with a purity of about 95 vol% from the second PSA column may also improve the process economics. Whilst, the required energy cost for hydrogen production for our process is calculated to be significantly lower than those for other various representative hydrogen production methods: 0.37 (0.44) times less than that of steam reforming of methane with (without) CO2 capture, 0.15 times less than that of the water electrolysis by the electric power system, and 0.073 times less than that of electrolysis of water by wind power. This result implies the practical potential of our cellulose-based green hydrogen production scheme.