Analysis of the Prospects for Using Waste Gas from an Oil Refinery in Order to Increase Production Efficiency and Reduce the Carbon Footprint

The analysis of the costs of hydrogen production under various scenarios of government support for low-carbon production technologies has been conducted in this paper. A scheme for hydrogen and electricity production based on utilization of secondary energy resources from an oil refinery has been presented. The cost of the hydrogen produced has been estimated, as well as the economic analysis of a project for the implementation of the proposed scheme under various scenarios for introducing quotas for greenhouse gas emissions. The cost of hydrogen was found to be 0.5 USD/kg(H2), which is approximately 3.37 times less than the cost of the cheapest low-carbon method of producing hydrogen. The proposed version of the project, which adopted a zero cost for CO2 emissions, showed that the discounted payback period is 5.2 years.