Table 1.
Cost-effectiveness analysis (hydrogen generation rate 600 kg/year) * (unit: USD).
| Method | DI Water (5 Year) |
DI Water (1 Year) |
Tap Water (5 Year) |
Tap Water (1 Year) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | |||||
| NRE | |||||
| Construction * | 7765 | 1553 | 67 | 13 | |
| Fuel Cell ** | 2400 | 2400 | 4140 | 4140 | |
| RE | |||||
| Maintenance *** | 1017 | 395 | 421 | 415 | |
| Utility bill # | 760 | 152 | 179 | 36 | |
| PEM ## | 1553 | 307 | 2645 | 529 | |
| Sum | 13,495 | 4807 | 7452 | 5133 | |
The following is a detailed description of Table 1. Construction *: The equipment cost of manufacturing DI water over a five-year duration includes the price of a GenPure XCAD UV-TOC water purifier (USD 7765), a Rio+800 submerged pump for pumping tap water (USD 17), an MOT-8000 pump (USD 33), and other miscellaneous filtering equipment such as activated carbon, water filter, and RO-membranes (USD 17 total). Averaging the total cost over five years yields the cost per year of DI water production. Fuel Cell **: DI water requires 40 fuel cells to achieve the same hydrogen production rate (600 kg/year), while tap water requires 69 fuel cells. This study uses the GESL020A fuel cell (USD 60 per fuel cell). Maintenance ***: Traditional DI Water incurs a total cost of USD 1017 over five years, averaging USD 203.4 per year. In contrast, this study utilizing Tap Water requires USD 421 over the same period, averaging USD 84.2 annually. This translates to an average yearly savings of approximately 58.6% in consumables costs. Utility Bill #: The system requires 6000 L of water per year to generate enough DI water. This amount costs approximately USD 36 per year, based on Taiwan’s cost of water. In addition, the water filtration equipment requires 0.11 kW of power. Assuming 1kWh of electricity costs USD 0.12, the total electricity bill per year costs USD 112. The cost of tap water is negligible due to its low consumption. The pumps require a total of 0.035 kW of power, yielding a yearly cost of USD 36. PEM ##: This research uses the Nafion 211 2.5 cm × 2.5 cm membrane (USD 2.6/PEM). DI water requires 120 PEMs per year, while tap water requires 207 PEMs. All of the above calculations were cycled.