The first technology in the world to fundamentally suppress temperature rise in hydrogen charging—especially during high-pressure refueling—has now been officially created. This innovation prominently decreases refueling time along with the decrease in the establishing and operational hydrogen fuel infrastructure cost.
Through greatly elevating the safety as well as efficiency when it comes to hydrogen refueling systems, the technology is anticipated to speed up the hydrogen mobility and infrastructure adoption and hence strengthen the global competitiveness within the hydrogen economy.
Dae-Hwan Kim, the principal researcher as well as the team lead, Nuclear Equipment Verification Laboratory in Busan Machinery Technology Research Center, which comes under the Korean Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM), has gone on to successfully develop as well as demonstrate the novel technology by way of using incompressible fluid. By way of 350 bar hydrogen charge tests, they went on to prove that the internal temperature rise in the tank can get reduced to within a bracket of 5° C, thereby helping hydrogen charging without any requirement for pre-cooling.
It is well to be noted that in the past, hydrogen refueling relied on injecting hydrogen cooled to -40° C to manage temperature rise in hydrogen charging, ensuring safe and stable fueling. But this method goes on to result in longer charging times and needs another cooling system, which in turn raises the infrastructure costs. The newly created method completely stands out by way of fundamentally eradicating temperature rise by way of using an incompressible fluid, hence, helping with safe and stable hydrogen charging that too without a cooling system.
The fundamental behind this kind of technology happens to involve pre-filling the hydrogen tank with an incompressible fluid like water just before charging. As the hydrogen gets introduced, the fluid along with it is extracted, thereby preventing adiabatic compression in the tank. This process goes on to lessen the fast temperature rise of hydrogen as well as the corresponding increase in the internal pressure, therefore allowing for rapid and more efficient refueling.
This innovation not just improves the speed of charging as compared to the present methods, but at the same time keeps the temperature very well under control, therefore, elevating the user convenience as well as economic perks for infrastructure operators. Since all of it does not need any high-performance cooling systems, it also goes on to offer a proper decrease in facility setup as well as maintenance costs. By way of preventing thermal degradation when it comes to internal tank components, it enhances the long-term durability, thereby further decreasing the cost of maintenance in terms of hydrogen vehicles as well as infrastructure.
Dae-Hwan Kim, the principal researcher, remarks that this newly created technology goes far beyond the limitations of the present hydrogen charging methods and, in a way, substantially elevates the infrastructure efficiency. He also added that they are at present exploring the potential application not just in vehicles but also in large-capacity hydrogen containers, which are used across trains, ships, and military vehicles.
This is indeed going to be a very vital technological advancement as far as promoting the hydrogen economy and at the same time securing global market competitiveness are concerned.