Opportunity for future green hydrogen development in Nepal comes with end-use infrastructural challenges. The heavy reliance of industries on fossil fuels (63.4%) despite the abundance of hydroelectricity poses an additional challenge to the green transition of Nepal. The presented work aims to study the possibility of storing and utilizing spilled hydroelectricity due to runoff rivers as a compatible alternative to imported petroleum fuels. This is achieved by converting green hydrogen from water electrolysis and carbon dioxide from carbon capture of hard-to-abate industries into synthetic methane for heating applications via the Sabatier process. An economy-of-scale study was conducted to identify the optimal scale for the reference case (Industries in Makwanpur District Nepal) for establishing the Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG) production industry. The techno-economic assessment was carried out for pilot scale and reference scale production unit individually. Uncertainty and sensitivity analyses were performed to study the project profitability and the sensitivity of the parameters influencing the feasibility of the production plant. The reference scale for the production of Synthetic Natural Gas was determined to be 40 Tons Per Day (TPD), with a total capital investment of around 72.15 Million USD. Electricity was identified as the most sensitive parameter affecting the levelized cost of production (LCOP). The 40 TPD plant was found to be price competitive to LPG when electricity price is subsidized below 3.55 NPR/unit (2.7 c/unit) from 12 NPR/unit (9.2 c/unit). In the case of the 2 TPD plant, for it to be profitable, the price of electricity must be subsidized to well below 2 NPR/kWh. The study concludes that the possibility of SNG production in Nepal is profitable and price-competitive at large scales and at the same time limited by the low round efficiency due to conversion losses. Additionally, it was observed that highly favorable conditions driven by government policies would be required for the pilot-scale SNG project to be feasible.

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尼泊尔绿色氢衍生燃料生产的规模经济

尼泊尔未来绿色氢发展的机遇伴随着最终用途基础设施的挑战。尽管水力发电丰富，但工业仍严重依赖化石燃料（63.4%），这给尼泊尔的绿色转型带来了额外的挑战。所提出的工作旨在研究储存和利用由于径流河流而泄漏的水力发电作为进口石油燃料的兼容替代品的可能性。这是通过萨巴蒂尔工艺将水电解产生的绿色氢气和难以减少的工业碳捕获产生的二氧化碳转化为用于加热应用的合成甲烷来实现的。进行了规模经济研究，以确定建立合成天然气 (SNG) 生产行业的参考案例（尼泊尔 Makwanpur 地区的工业）的最佳规模。对中试和参考规模生产装置分别进行了技术经济评价。进行了不确定性和敏感性分析，以研究项目盈利能力和影响生产工厂可行性的参数的敏感性。合成天然气生产参考规模确定为40吨/日（TPD），总投资约7215万美元。电力被认为是影响平准化生产成本（LCOP）的最敏感参数。研究发现，当电价补贴低于 12 NPR/单位（9.2 c/单位）至 3.55 NPR/单位（2.7 c/单位）时，40 TPD 发电厂的价格与 LPG 相比具有竞争力。就 2 TPD 电厂而言，为了实现盈利，电价必须补贴至远低于 2 NPR/kWh。该研究得出的结论是，尼泊尔大规模生产煤制天然气的可能性是有利可图的，并且具有价格竞争力，但同时由于转换损失而导致循环效率低。此外，据观察，煤制天然气试点项目的可行性需要政府政策推动的非常有利的条件。