A hydrogen network is usually optimized based on lowering the hydrogen concentration of each hydrogen sink to the lowest limit in order to obtain possibly the largest hydrogen saving.However

it may reduce the operating flexibility.During reducing the hydrogen sink concentration

the pinch location may change which leads to the slope reduction of hydrogen saving amount-hydrogen sink concentration curve.Based on such analysis as well as the other economic factors

a method to determine the optimal hydrogen concentration to optimize the system is proposed

in which way

good hydrogen saving with a marginally lower concentration in hydrogen sinks can be obtained.A case study is used to show the method

for which the optimal hydrogen concentration of a key hydrogen sink is found based on the relationship between the concentration of the key hydrogen sink and the hydrogen saving amount.The hydrogen saving amount is 42.81 mol穝-1 which accounts for 21.58% of the current fresh hydrogen consumption.The results show that this method could achieve a good effect of hydrogen saving in the case of that the hydrogen sink concentration reduces lower.