Offshore wind-to-hydrogen for powering port land mobility: case study in Port of Valencia

Abstract

[ES] El presente trabajo es un estudio de caso de investigación de diseño sobre un proyecto de energía eólica flotante en la costa mediterránea frente al Puerto de Valencia para generar hidrógeno para convertir la actual flota de movilidad de carga terrestre en una que funciona con pilas de combustible, reduciendo las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero cumpliendo con los Requisitos del Pacto Verde Europeo 2050. Esta investigación de tesis se alinea con el proyecto ¿Puerto de Valencia ¿ Estrategia hacia cero emisiones para 2030¿ que tiene como objetivo introducir innovaciones verdes para reducir el consumo de combustibles fósiles en el puerto principalmente con sistemas inteligentes, producción de energía renovable y consumo de hidrógeno verde. La combinación de datos de fuente eólica y consumo de diesel en operaciones terrestres portuarias es necesaria para la dimensión del proyecto. El alcance del proyecto se satisface con datos públicos, sin embargo para obtener un resultado más preciso se debe realizar un estudio profundo para obtener los datos relativos exactos.

[EN] Maritime cargo transport is a major energy consumer and polluting sector, accounting for 90% of world trade in goods and responsible for 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions per year. The Port of Valencia, as Spanish and European Mediterranean leader in containerized cargo traffic, aims to reduce its carbon footprint in cargo operations by introducing green initiatives based on hydrogen and offshore wind energy generation; as established by the European Green Deal and the Valencia port strategy towards zero emissions by 2030. Thus, the objective of this study is to evaluate the potential of hydrogen generation by offshore wind energy to replace fossil fuel in the mobility of land cargo in the Port of Valencia. For this case study, it was analysed the feasibility of deploying an offshore wind farm 45 km from the Port of Valencia by studying more than 100 000 wind data collected at an altitude of 10 metres and using the Kubik formula to approximate this data to the altitude of the wind turbines and the continuous Weibull function to calculate the energy and power recovery from the wind. In addition, were assessed the input requirements of the largest operational PEM electrolyser to produce hydrogen, and were studied the hydrogen requirements of inland freight mobility vehicles, such as container yard tractors, RoRo tractors, reach stackers and about 3 000 inland connection trucks travelling 85,000 km per year. For the conversion of diesel to hydrogen, different methodologies were applied based on the accuracy of the data, where the most important factor is the selection of tank-to-wheel efficiencies. To give a flexible view to the project, Scenarios 1 to 5 have been presented depending on the scope of the diesel-to-hydrogen change and linked to the future development of this technologies. Scenario 1 sideline the truck consumption, which represents 94% of the total energy demand, while Scenario 5 considers the overall daily consumption of 200 000 liters of diesel that could be replaced with 34 000 kilograms of hydrogen, produced by a 100 MW electrolyser powered by about 350 MWp of offshore wind power. This work demonstrates that there is a great opportunity for ports to become major hydrogen producers in the coming decades, reducing their inland footprint and presenting a major business opportunity. This study confirms that, efforts in vehicle performance studies are vital to obtain an accurate transition to green mobility in port logistics.