The technology of hydrogen storage progressing well!

 

Vehicles equipped with a fuel cell with hydrogen, under development now, represent a promising alternative! Here’s good news concerning them.

The center of Ripault CEA (The French atomic energy commission) has developed a technology for storing hydrogen which won best European performance. The container in question had posted the best results in terms of durability and safety: it is part of the European project StorHy (Hydrogen Storage Systems for Automotive applications, see article). This technology has been fully realized in polymer composite materials: it could equip future vehicles running on hydrogen.

hydrogen storage progressing
The CEA says that among the various storage technologies embedded studied (solid storage, cryogenic and hyperbaric), experts from the European Commission and representatives of 40 European partners (both industrial and academic) project took stock of 54 months of development dedicated to storage technologies for hydrogen. These tanks, developed in partnership with the manufacturer Ullit, storing hydrogen in gaseous form.

The inner part of the shell (the liner), ensuring the sealing of hydrogen, is made of polymer as an innovative synthesis and processing simultaneously. This technology has been the subject of patents by the CEA and Air Liquide and is licensed to the company ULLIT for its industrialization. As for the external composite hull, it provides resistance and mechanical protection. It is made by filament winding and uses materials from aerospace such as carbon fiber.

CEA stressed that this technology is now the only meet three main criteria from the European specifications for embedded storage to 700 bars:

life: to represent their aging over the life of a vehicle, the ECA reservoirs have proved their resistance to more than 15 000 cycles of filling (20-875 bar) without any significant loss of properties (standard);

sealing the leak rate reservoirs ECA was a minimum 20 times less than the requested value by the standard (1cm3/L/h);

Safety: CEA tanks have demonstrated their resistance to internal pressure above the burst pressure fixed by the standard (1645 bars, almost 2.5 times the pressure of service).

The CEA said that the use of three reservoirs compact, with 3 times 34 liters of internal volume, allows boarding nearly 4.5 kg of hydrogen. This configuration allows you to explore with current technologies autonomy of around 500 km for a family car with a fuel cell PEMFC 70 to 80 kW.

The ECA continues his research within the ANR, of OSEO and the ‘Joint Technology Initiative on hydrogen European: they are intended to accelerate the industrial maturity of such reservoirs and facilitate their integration into a vehicle ( optimization of stored energy densities, establishing connections and sensors for maintenance; adaptability of the shape of the tank to the vehicle; integration into a complete system CAP and lower costs).

Posted under Hydrogen Economy

This post was written by admin on November 21, 2008

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