Assessment of hydrogen production technologies from agricultural residues in Vietnam

Green hydrogen is one of the alternative options to decarbonize the energy sector and limit the global temperature rise below 1.5 °C. Vietnam has various biomass resources, including agricultural and forestry by-products. However, this country has not had any research to evaluate the suitability of hydrogen production technologies using biomass sources in general and agricultural residues in particular with all relevant factors as a basis for investment and development. The paper assesses three green hydrogen production technologies from agricultural residue, including pyrolysis, gasification, and fermentation, by simultaneously applying the Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat (SWOT) analysis and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The hydrogen production technologies and agricultural residues in Vietnam are used as case studies. The obtained results on the weighting factors indicate that the economic indicator accounts for 50.7 %, followed by the technical indicator at 27.8 % and the environmental indicator at 21.5 %. Among the hydrogen production technologies, gasification is the most prioritized technology, at 43.3 %. The priorities of pyrolysis and fermentation are not considerably different, at 29.6 % and 27.1 %, respectively. Rice straw has the highest hydrogen production capacity with a total potential of about 50.43 billion m3 while the lowest total hydrogen production potential is cassava pomace with a value of 0.26 billion m3. Designing and simulating the hydrogen production process from agricultural waste using selected technologies will be studied in further work to finalize and verify the used assumptions, methods, and information in this study. [Display omitted] •The paper assesses three green hydrogen production technologies.•Weighting factors of economic, technical, environmental indicators are calculated.•Priorities of gasification, pyrolysis, and fermentation technologies are determined.