Abstract
In the urgent effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the industrial sector, biogas-derived green hydrogen and power co-generation represents a promising solution. Biogas, a renewable and carbon-neutral resource, provides a flexible feedstock for decentralized energy systems, particularly in regions with well-developed agricultural or waste biomass infrastructure. This approach allows the deployment of cost-efficient systems aligned with climate targets and industrial decarbonization roadmaps. Compared to steam methane reforming (SMR), sorbent-enhanced SMR (SE-SMR) with integrated calcium looping (CaL) CO2 capture reduces process emissions while enhancing hydrogen yield. This study investigates the economic and exergy-based implications of partially splitting hydrogen from a SE-SMR-CaL system producing 50, 000 Nm³/h of H2 from desulfurized biogas. Following heat integration using the PINCH methodology, an electrically self-sufficient base case was established. Economic and exergy analyses were conducted in Excel, with cash flow allocation based on exergy contributions. An automated optimization routine identified competitive levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) and hydrogen (LCOH). Results show that increasing the hydrogen split to power generation maintains nearly constant LCOE (<1% variation) while reducing overall exergy efficiency. Partial hydrogen splitting achieves LCOE below 30.5 €/MWh at the expense of increased LCOH, highlighting a trade-off between electricity and hydrogen economics in flexible, multi-vector systems. The workflow demonstrates that incorporating electricity generation into a sorbent-enhanced hydrogen production system using air combustion is technically and economically feasible.