Publications

The reliable supplies of electricity and hydrogen required for 100% renewable energy systems have been found to be achievable by utilisation of a mix of different resources and storage technologies. In this paper more demanding parameter conditions than hitherto considered are used in measurement of the reliability of variable renewable energy resources. The defined conditions require that supply of baseload electricity (BLEL) and baseload hydrogen (BLH2) occurs solely using cost-optimised configurations of variable photovoltaic solar power onshore wind energy and balancing technologies. The global scenario modelling is based on hourly weather data in a 0.45° × 0.45° spatial resolution. Simulations are conducted for Onsite and Coastal Scenarios from 2020 to 2050 in 10-year time-steps. The results show that for 7% weighted average cost of capital Onsite BLEL can be generated at less than 119 54 41 and 33 €/MWhel in 2020 2030 2040 and 2050 respectively across the best sites with a maximum 20000 TWh annual cumulative generation potential. Up to 20000 TWhH2HHV Onsite BLH2 can be produced at less than 66 48 40 and 35 €/MWhH2HHV in 2020 2030 2040 and 2050 respectively. A partially flexible electricity demand at 8000 FLh could significantly reduce the costs of electricity supply in the studied scenario. Along with battery storage power-to-hydrogen-to-power is found to have a major role in supply of BLEL beyond 2030 as both a daily and seasonal balancing solution. Batteries are not expected to have a significant role in the provision of electricity to water electrolysers.

With downward trends in Australian equipment manufacturing there are increased numbers of overseas designed manufactured and certified hydrogen systems being introduced into Australia. In parallel there are also opportunities for hydrogen and its carriers to be exported to overseas. Certainty of reputable codes and standards is important to meet regulatory requirements and community safety expectations locally and overseas.

This paper is a progress report of Hydrogen Mobility Australia’s (HMA) Technical Committee on mapping the regulatory codes and standards (RCS) gaps in Australia and establishing a pathway together with Standards Australia and Commonwealth and State Governments. This paper will discuss the benefits of the pathway covering the areas of:

• Safety – Enable Australia to implement consensual rules to minimise avoidable risks to persons and goods to an acceptable level
• Environment – Ensure protection of the environment from unacceptable damage due to the operation and effects of products processes and services linked to hydrogen
• Elimination of barriers to trade – Provide consistency between international jurisdictions enabling streamlined entry of hydrogen related equipment from overseas
• Upskilling of Australian industry participants – Gain useful learnings from countries more advanced in their progress in implementing ISO standards and hydrogen sector development

This paper is jointly prepared by representatives of HMA Technical Committee and Department of Energy and Mining South Australian Government. The paper also highlights the initiatives of Commonwealth and State Governments to advance the hydrogen economy.

Liquid hydrogen is increasingly being used as a delivery and storage medium for stations that provide compressed gaseous hydrogen for fuel cell electric vehicles. In efforts to provide scientific justification for separation distances for liquid hydrogen infrastructure in fire codes the dispersion characteristics of cryogenic hydrogen jets (50–64 K) from high aspect ratio nozzles have been measured at 3 and 5 barabs stagnation pressures. These nozzles are more characteristic of unintended leaks which would be expected to be cracks rather than conventional round nozzles. Spontaneous Raman scattering was used to measure the concentration and temperature field along the major and minor axes. Within the field of interrogation the axis-switching phenomena was not observed but rather a self-similar Gaussian-profile flow regime similar to room temperature or cryogenic hydrogen releases through round nozzles. The concentration decay rate and half-widths for the planar cryogenic jets were found to be nominally equivalent to that of round nozzle cryogenic hydrogen jets indicating a similar flammable envelope. The results from these experiments will be used to validate models for cryogenic hydrogen dispersion that will be used for simulations of alternative scenarios and quantitative risk assessment

Emissions from natural gas combustion and use are the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the UK. The use of hydrogen in place of natural gas in principle offers a potential route to long term widespread decarbonisation of gas distribution networks as shown by the Leeds City Gate (‘H21’) study.1 The purpose of considering conversion to hydrogen is to deliver widespread carbon abatement across the UK at lower cost than alternative decarbonisation strategies.<br/>The Government is to finalise and publish the long-awaited ‘Clean Growth Plan’ along with an Industrial Strategy White Paper in Autumn 2017. Conversion from natural gas to hydrogen potentially on an incremental basis would likely represent a major opportunity for new industrial growth. This might be through the longer term stability or potential expansion of existing (newly decarbonised) energy intensive industry or through business opportunities and growth created from new technologies developed to facilitate the transition to hydrogen as the UK becomes a global leader and major exporter of equipment and skills. Job creation and the resulting gross value added (GVA) to the economy could therefore be significant in delivery of the goals of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).<br/>The core requirement is to supply low carbon hydrogen in bulk matching production to distribution network demand at an affordable cost. The H21 study concluded that to do so reliably hydrogen is best produced by reducing natural gas in steam methane reformers (SMRs) fitted with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The study proposed that the considerable inter-seasonal and daily fluctuations in network demand can be managed by storing hydrogen in underground salt formations. It concluded that the SMRs with associated carbon dioxide (CO2) capture should be located near to where CO2 transport and storage infrastructure was likely to be created and noted that candidate locations for this are Teesside Humberside Grangemouth and the Liverpool-Manchester (L-M) area. Two of these Humberside and the L-M area are within the Cadent Gas Ltd (‘Cadent’) network and are also industrial ‘clusters’ with significant populations.<br/>The work reported here builds upon the approach proposed in the H21 project by focussing on defining ‘low carbon’ hydrogen supply and distribution systems in Humberside and the L-M area at a system scale sufficient to supply a large city.2 Both the Humber and L-M clusters are close to salt deposits which are suitable for both daily and inter-seasonal storage of hydrogen (for initial or expanded projects). Furthermore new large-scale gas Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) plants widely assumed as likely anchor projects for CCS infrastructure have been consented in both cluster areas confirming that they are both strong candidates as locations for the first CCS clusters and hence as locations for a hydrogen supply system.

Shipping accounts for about 3% of global CO2 emissions. In order to achieve the target set by the Paris Agreement IMO introduced their GHG strategy. This strategy envisages 50% emission reduction from international shipping by 2050 compared with 2008. This target cannot be fulfilled if conventional fuels are used. Amongst others hydrogen is considered to be one of the strong candidates as a zero-emissions fuel. Yet concerns around the safety of its storage and usage have been formulated and need to be addressed. “Safety” in this article is defined as the control of recognized hazards to achieve an acceptable level of risk. This article aims to propose a new way of comparing two systems with regard to their safety. Since safety cannot be directly measured fuzzy set theory is used to compare linguistic terms such as “safer”. This method is proposed to be used during the alternative design approach. This approach is necessary for deviations from IMO rules for example when hydrogen should be used in shipping. Additionally the properties of hydrogen that can pose a hazard such as its wide flammability range are identified.

Following the unprecedented Covid-19 outbreak currently unfolding Hydrogen Europe is publishing its latest paper: "Post COVID-19 and the Hydrogen Sector - A Hydrogen Europe Analysis"<br/><br/>On the long-term climate and environmental challenges remain the major threat to our planet and to humanity as a whole.  The economic crisis following the Covid-19 pandemic may cause a significant delay to the adoption and commercial roll-out of clean hydrogen. It may even permanently endanger the capacity of the clean hydrogen sector to take-up its role as the missing link in the energy transition.<br/><br/>A swift decisive and coordinated action is necessary to address the risks and at least dampen the negative impact that they may have on the deployment of clean hydrogen technologies and on our transition to a net carbon yet powerful and wealthy economy.<br/><br/>Our document outlines the need for and rationale behind rapid action as a result of the Covid-19 impact. Please find here below a short summary of what you will find in it:<br/><br/>Is there a need to take action? – describing why the current pandemic will result in significantly jeopardising the hydrogen sector if no action is taken.<br/><br/>Why should action be taken? – underlining the importance of the hydrogen sector to EU’s decarbonisation efforts as well as its long-term potential to support sustainable economic growth of the EU.  <br/><br/>What can be done? – outlining several potential options for supporting the industry starting from most obvious monetary support but including also no less important policy actions that can be taken to restore investors’ confidence.<br/><br/>How much will it cost? – containing an estimation of the value of the monetary support needed in order to retain the high skilled workforce and the sector’s investment portfolio followed by an estimation of what will be the impact of the action.

Transition metal carbides are a class of materials widely known for both their interesting physical properties and catalytic activity. In this work we have used plane-wave DFT methods to study the interaction with increasing amounts of molecular hydrogen on the low-index surfaces of four major carbides – TiC VC ZrC and NbC. Adsorption is found to be generally exothermic and occurs predominantly on the surface carbon atoms. We identify trends over the carbides and their surfaces for the energetics of the adsorption as a function of their electronic and geometrical characteristics. An ab initio thermodynamics formalism is used to study the properties of the slabs as the hydrogen coverage is increased.

The energy approach for determining the durability of structural elements at high temperature creep and hydrogen activity was proposed. It has been shown that the approach significantly simplifies research compared with the known ones. Approbation of the approach was carried out on the example of determining the indicators of durability of the Bridgman sample under conditions of creep and different levels of hydrogenation of the metal. It was shown that with an increase of hydrogen concentration in the metal from 2 to 10 ppm the durability of the test sample decreased from 22 to 58%.

The present research focuses on the investigation of an in situ hydrogen charging effect during Crack Tip Opening Displacement testing (CTOD) on the fracture toughness properties of X65 pipeline steel. This grade of steel belongs to the broader category of High Strength Low Alloy Steels (HSLA) and its microstructure consists of equiaxed ferritic and bainitic grains with a low volume fraction of degenerated pearlite islands. The studied X65 steel specimens were extracted from pipes with 19.15 mm wall thickness. The fracture toughness parameters were determined after imposing the fatigue pre-cracked specimens on air on a specific electrolytic cell under a slow strain rate bending loading (according to ASTM G147-98 BS7448 and ISO12135 standards). Concerning the results of this study in the first phase the hydrogen cations’ penetration depth the diffusion coefficient of molecular and atomic hydrogen and the surficial density of blisters were determined. Next the characteristic parameters related to fracture toughness (such as J KQ CTODel CTODpl) were calculated by the aid of the Force-Crack Mouth Open Displacement curves and the relevant analytical equations.

Currently the periodic inspection of composite tanks is typically achieved via hydrostatic test combined with internal and external visual inspections. Acoustic emission (AE) technology demonstrates a promising non destructive testing method for damage mode identification and damage assessment. This study focuses on AE signals characteristics and evolution behaviours for used 70 MPa Type IV hydrogen storage tanks during hydrostatic burst tests. AE-based tensile tests for epoxy resin specimen and carbon fiber tow were implemented to obtain characteristics of matrix cracking and fiber breakage. Then broadband AE sensors were used to capture AE signals during multi-step loading tests and hydrostatic burst tests. K-means ++ algorithm and wavelet packet transform are performed to cluster AE signals and verify the validity. Combining with tensile tests three clusters are manifested via matrix cracking fiber/matrix debonding and fiber breakage according to amplitude duration counts and absolute energy. The number of three clustering signals increases with the increase of pressure showing accumulated and aggravated damage. The sudden appearance of a large number of fiber breakage signals during hydrostatic burst tests suggests that the composite tank structure is becoming mechanically unstable namely the impending burst failure of the tank.