New paper published: Green Hydrogen Supply Chain Network Design for Aviation: Model Development and Case Study for German Airports in 2050

Summary:
This study formulates an HSCN (hydrogen supply chain network) design problem tailored to aviation. The model minimizes total system cost by selecting facility locations, capacities, transportation modes and flows across the full value chain: renewable electricity → electrolysis → gas hydrogen → liquefaction → liquid hydrogen storage → airport refuelling. It explicitly accounts for spatial variability in renewable electricity costs, techno-economic characteristics of liquefaction/storage/transport (including economies of scale and handling losses), and the distinction between gas and liquid transport modes. The Germany target year 2050 case study (23 largest airports, 16 federal states as production hubs, EHB backbone projection) shows that a highly consolidated supplier structure (only six suppliers chosen) and pipeline-based solutions dominate when pipelines are available — driven by economies of scale and projected infrastructure. In many optimal solutions hydrogen is piped in gas form and liquefied near airports; trucks were not selected under the scenario assumptions. The model was implemented in Python and solved with SCIP and Gurobi.

Key highlights:

• A MILP framework for aviation-specific hydrogen supply chain design covering production, liquefaction, storage, and transport.
• Spatially resolved techno-economic modeling of renewable electricity, liquefaction and transport.
• Case study (Germany, target year 2050) demonstrates supplier consolidation and dominant pipeline usage when backbone infrastructure is available.
• Cost-minimizing networks favor supplying airports from airport-dense suppliers despite higher local production costs which proves that economies of scale matters.
• Model indicates piping gas hydrogen and liquefying at airports is often optimal under the projected backbone.

How to access / cite:
A. Ögrük, R. Marx, C. Thies, S. Stiller, Green Hydrogen Supply Chain Network Design for Aviation: Model Development and Case Study for German Airports in 2050, in: G. Voigt et al. (eds.), Operations Research Proceedings 2023, Lecture Notes in Operations Research, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58405-3_58