Thread 2 – Infrastructure System Analysis
The goal of this research will be to develop a detailed understanding of production facilities and infrastructure at different scales for biofuels, electricity, hydrogen, conventional, and unconventional liquid fuels using tools and models being developed including geographical information systems (GIS), mathematical programming tools, and engineering economic models for infrastructure components. This research will also include an assessment of key inputs such as water, energy resources, electricity, and land.
Directors of Thread 2: Christopher Yang, Yueyue Fan, and Joan Ogden
Graduate Student Researchers: Steven Chen, Ryohei Hinokuma, Eric Huang, Nils Johnson, Xuping Li, David Lin, Ryan McCarthy, David McCollum, Sinnott Murphy, Mike Nicholas, Nathan Parker, Stephanie Ritchey, and Guihua Wang
Primary Objectives
- Develop detailed technical understanding of fuel infrastructure components and pathways (models and technical and economic analyses)
- Develop tools for design and layout of fuel production, distribution and refueling infrastructure to assess costs, inputs and environmental impacts
- Investigate infrastructure transition options for different fuel pathways and consideration of geography, demand scenarios, risk, uncertainty, reliability and other important factors.
- Scales to consider (Individual infrastructure components, Single fuel full pathway, Multi-fuel full pathways, and transition modeling)
- Enable cross-comparison between infrastructure costs and development challenges for different fuel pathways
Major Project Areas
- Transportation fuels and electricity interactions
- H2 and electricity interactions
- Co-production of electricity and fuels
- California electricity supply scenarios
- Biorefinery modeling
- Tools for estimating costs for H2 pathways in different regions
- Optimal infrastructure design for single pathways and multi-fuel pathways
- Modeling urban and regional infrastructure for fuel pathways
- Transition optimization
- Feedstock transport
- Uncertainty, reliability and risk
Structure of "Cross-Comparison" in this thread
We will model infrastructure requirements for a variety of different primary energy/fuel/vehicle pathways. This will allow us to compare important metrics such as delivered fuel cost, capital cost, feedstock and energy requirements and emissions for different pathways.
2007 STEPS Achievements Posted