A mathematical programming model for facility location optimization of hydrogen production from renewable energy sources

Fossil fuels are the primary energy sources and meet the global energy demands. However, environmental and health problems related with these sources boosted the demand for renewable energy sources. Hydrogen, as an energy carrier has a growing potential for solving these problems. In this article, a mathematical programming model that integrates the production, storage and transportation, safety, location, and staff assignment decisions is presented considering minimization of costs. Although most of the studies focus on location, distribution, storage decisions of hydrogen energy networks, the article also includes production, safety and staff assignment decisions to make this problem more practical. Furthermore, we also investigate the set covering constraint will ensure that each region is covered by minimum number of the hydrogen facilities. The developed model ensures a balance between location, distribution, storage, production, safety and staff decisions by installing two production facilities by assigning total 9 warehouses, 22 tank trucks, 12100 km pipeline, 35 staffs under distance constraint 2000 km in regions 1 and 5. The computational results indicate that the proposed model produces effective solutions for the coverage to all region and minimum total cost for real-case situations.