“Hydro-Gen” Trigeneration System for a Small-Medium Scale Airport: Energy and Economic Performance Assessment via Dynamic Simulations Under Electric-Load Control Strategy

One of the most attractive technologies to reach the final goal of net zero emissions by 2050 lies in the use of green hydrogen that can be supplied to fuel cells for producing electricity and heat. Nowadays, airports are responsible for 13% of the European Union’s transport sector greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, an innovative containerized modular trigeneration system, named “Hydro-Gen”, has been proposed to cover electric, thermal and cooling demands of a small-medium scale airport via fuel cells fuelled by green hydrogen. A dynamic simulation model of the “Hydro-Gen” system has been developed by means of the TRNSYS platform. The proposed system has been simulated under two operating scenarios with reference to a 1-year period while coupled with the selected airport demand profiles. The simulation results have been analyzed from energy and economic points of view and compared with a traditional energy generation scenario (where the central power grid only is used). The results underlined that the proposed system significantly reduces primary energy consumption under both scenarios up to a maximum 100.9%, while the economic performance are strongly dependent on the unit cost of hydrogen.