Hydrogen
Aviation and heavy transport applications rely on condensed sources of energy, usually provided by hydrocarbon fuels. Hydrogen is an attractive alternative to hydrocarbons as its production and by-products of combustion can be carbon neutral. As a gas, however, it needs to be contained at high pressure to provide the energy density required for these applications.
This section looks at the unique problems that hydrogen storage for transport applications poses, as well as the solutions available, and in development, by our members.
Discovery and Development
Hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant element in the universe. Robert Boyle, (of Boyle’s law) is acknowledged as being the first to identify hydrogen in 1671. Further work was carried out by Henry Cavendish who in 1766 recognised that hydrogen gas was an identifiable substance and in fact an element. It was left to Antoine Lavoisier to carry further work and give hydrogen its name. In 1898 James Dewar liquefied hydrogen.
The work of Boyle, Cavendish and Dewar laid the foundations for the development of hydrogen which we are now seeing with the hydrogen economy.
Throughout the twentieth century hydrogen applications expanded into many areas such as chemical production, metal processing, space travel and transport.
ECMA and the Hydrogen Economy
With the increasing use of hydrogen there is a need to safely store and transport hydrogen. Hydrogen can be transported and stored as a liquid. This is suitable for many applications, however due to liquid hydrogen’s very low temperature, approximately -252 C it requires specialist equipment to maintain this temperature and even so the liquid will eventually boil off to gaseous hydrogen. For this reason there is a requirement for containers to transport and store gaseous hydrogen.
ECMA members have been developing safe hydrogen storage systems for very many decades and in some cases for over one hundred years.