Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Hydrogenlogistics (Enabling the Hydrogen Economy)
Teaser
Global initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in mobility and industry increase across the globe and given its physio-chemical attributes, hydrogen produced out of renewable energies will need to become a core vector of the global energy system. However, hydrogen...
Summary
Global initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in mobility and industry increase across the globe and given its physio-chemical attributes, hydrogen produced out of renewable energies will need to become a core vector of the global energy system. However, hydrogen transport and storage with today’s standard technologies (i.e. compressed or liquefied/cryogenic hydrogen) have significant shortfalls regarding costs, easiness to handle and safety and are thus prohibitive for the global roll-out of a renewable hydrogen society.
Hydrogenious’ LOHC technology tackles these issues be offering a revolutionary new hydrogen storage and transport technology based on a reversible catalytic hydrogenation / dehydrogenation process. The technology offers the ability to store large amounts of hydrogen in low volumes (up to 57kg/m³) and at atmospheric conditions. Hydrogenious is a global pioneer in the field of these LOHC technologies and design, build and distributes the required hydrogenation and dehydrogenation systems.
As hydrogenation of aromatic compounds such as the carrier used by Hydrogenious is a well-known process in chemical industry and furthermore, Hydrogenious has closed high-quality partnerships for the development of large scale hydrogenation plants (e.g. with MAN), the focus of this project lies on the development of commercially viable dehydrogenation systems (product name: ReleaseBOX). The objective of the project is to develop and test a modular system structure, which allows Hydrogenious to offer systems in line with its customer requirements, especially in the field of hydrogen refuelling stations and industrial hydrogen consumption. In parallel to the technical developments, Hydrogenious very pro-actively works on market and business development by means of conference and trade fair participation as well as development of customer specific case studies.
Work performed
The work performed in the first phase of the project can be split into two parts:
1) Market and business development to foster Hydrogenious’ commercial traction:
a. Market development focussed participation in political and market conferences globally (e.g. customer workshops by Engie in France, hydrogen conference in Rugao (China), political conferences in Berlin (e.g. dena Congress) or Brussels (e.g. Hydrogen Europe)
b. Continuation of participation in industry trade fairs such as h2-fair as part of the Hannover Messe, the EVS30 in Stuttgart or the Energy Storage Europe in Düsseldorf.
c. Development of customer studies, e.g. together with Engie (France), Praxair (USA), AkzoNobel (Netherlands) and Broad-Ocean Motor (China)
d. Market development activities with Broad-Ocean Motor have already resulted in the closing of a further pilot contract for two systems as well as a cooperation agreement to roll-out Hydrogenious’ systems in China as part of an HRS network
2) Technical development to bring Hydrogenious ReleaseBOX systems from TRL 6 to TRL 9:
a. Central topic of the technical development activities is the build-up of a next generation dehydrogenation unit (ReleaseBOX) with 10 Nm³/h capacity at Hydrogenious premises
b. The system will allow Hydrogenious to test different modular set-ups (e.g. with or without PSA or compressor, single or dual-reactor mode)
c. In line with the project time table, the system engineering has been completed and build-up is currently ongoing.
d. Further engineering will be ongoing throughout the project to take new findings and developments also from operating field systems into account for a final system design by the end of the project.
Final results
Progress beyond the state-of-the-art:
1. Development of a first of it´s kind apparatus which combines several units of operation in one unit with the aim of space and cost reduction as well as best possible energy recuperation
2. Engineering to include a PSA and compressor has been completed – a globally first of its kind for LOHC systems
3. On business development side, the closing of Hydrogenious deal with Broad Ocean Motors can be considered as beyond state-of-the-art as it enables Hydrogenious to roll-out the LOHC technology in the most promising region for hydrogen activities
Expected results until the end of the project:
1. On the technical side, the finalization of the system build-up will be followed by an intensive testing phase to assess the operational viability of the newly developed solutions. Based on the results, Hydrogenious will then complete a re-engineering to derive a final system design, which can easily be scaled up and modularized to account for the large variety of hydrogen customers and regional requirements.
2. On the business development side, Hydrogenious targets the delivery of a further systems to the USA in 2019. Furthermore, closing of two cooperation agreements (one in Europe, one in USA) are targeted to be closed. The operation and intensive testing of the project’s LOHC system will be of vital importance to complete such cooperation agreements.
Hydrogenious is convinced that the work performed under this project as well as the further developments following the project will have a major impact on the social acceptance of the hydrogen mobility and roll-out of a global hydrogen economy.