THERMO-ECONOMIC MODELING OF HYDROGEN ENERGY INTEGRATION IN SMART FACTORIES

Abstract

Here we investigate when and how hydrogen integration improves thermo-economic performance in smart factories by synthesizing international evidence and analyzing a multi-case plant dataset; a systematic review of 46 peer-reviewed studies scoped the technology, operations, and exergy–cost foundations that informed the empirical model, and the problem addressed is the lack of plant-resolved, tariff-aware evidence linking digital maturity and integration depth to levelized cost outcomes; the purpose is to quantify the relationships among renewable share to electrolysis, integration depth across electrolyzer, storage, and fuel cell, storage-to-load ratio, load variability, demand-response participation, and energy-management maturity with plant-level key performance indicators including levelized cost of hydrogen, energy cost intensity, exergy efficiency, CO₂ intensity, and reliability; the design is quantitative, cross-sectional, and case-based; the sample comprises 120 cloud or enterprise cases with EMS or SCADA telemetry aligned to audited tariff and financial records; the analysis plan includes descriptive statistics, correlation matrices, and multiple regression with sector fixed effects, robust errors, and a pre-specified interaction term testing whether energy-management maturity amplifies the benefit of renewable share; headline findings show that higher renewable share is the strongest single predictor of lower unit cost, deeper integration raises exergetic efficiency and lowers emissions, storage exhibits diminishing cost returns beyond roughly work-shift duration, and digital maturity significantly strengthens the cost reductions associated with renewable alignment; implications for practice are to prioritize renewable-aligned electrolysis before oversizing storage, right-size duration to variability fingerprints, invest in EMS maturity and governance, and deploy fuel-cell CHP where thermal and electrical peaks coincide to decarbonize without compromising reliability.