Integrated Wind-Solar-LNG system for green liquefied hydrogen and multi-energy supply: Techno-Economic-Environmental analysis and data-driven ANN-GA optimization

Abstract

The production of low-carbon hydrogen fuel is critical for sustainable energy systems. This study proposes a centralized district-scale wind–solar cogeneration system designed to generate green liquefied hydrogen alongside electricity, cooling, and freshwater for zero-emission building clusters. The system couples a wind farm and parabolic trough solar collectors with an LNG regasification unit, steam and organic Rankine cycles, an absorption refrigeration cycle, a thermoelectric generator, a reverse osmosis desalination plant, a proton exchange membrane electrolyzer, and a Claude-based hydrogen liquefaction cycle. LNG cold energy is strategically utilized to enhance hydrogen liquefaction efficiency, reduce refrigeration energy demand, and maximize overall exergy utilization. Cascaded thermal integration among power, cooling, and hydrogen subsystems further improves waste-heat recovery and system performance. A comprehensive energy, exergy, economic, and environmental assessment is conducted, and multi-objective optimization using NSGA-II, assisted by an artificial neural network surrogate model (MSE = 0.00681), substantially reduces computational time while maintaining high accuracy. Under optimal conditions, the system achieves an exergy efficiency of 21.25%, producing 4.19 kg/h of liquefied hydrogen as a green fuel, 1.39 MW of net electricity, and freshwater and cooling at a 29.6% lower total cost rate relative to the baseline. A case study for Dammam, Saudi Arabia, demonstrates the system’s potential as a scalable, low-carbon, integrated energy–water–fuel solution in hot-arid climates.