A central challenge on the way to a world without fossil fuels is the development of an infrastructure that provides sufficient energy to all necessary sectors regardless of the weather. Gaseous energy carriers, especially hydrogen (H2), play a key role here: It is easy to produce, easy to store and can be reused in many areas, for example as a basic material in the chemical industry, for reconversion in power plants or as a fuel. Another advantage is its handling: it is similar to that of natural gas, for which a well-developed infrastructure already exists.
A central field of work of the research group Sector Integration – Gas Technology is therefore dedicated to the question of how this infrastructure can be operated with hydrogen from a technical and economic point of view. We are researching this with a high level of practical relevance in numerous third-party funded projects in exchange with representatives from industry and science.
The storage of hydrogen on a large scale is the subject of a project on a salt cavern, as is typically used for natural gas. For this purpose, we are modelling hydrogen operation on the basis of concrete boundary conditions. We develop models that realistically represent the existing infrastructure of pipelines, compressors, purification plants and storage caverns. With the help of time series developed in-house with regard to the supply and demand for hydrogen, the dynamic operational management and required storage capacities can be calculated. The results are used by cavern operators in the development of technical dimensioning concepts and their economic evaluation.
