SCOPE
Hydrogen storage and distribution
Maturity Level
TRL 4
Development Level
Software and proof of concept
Protection Level
Development of Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers technology
Entity:
Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC) facilitate the transportation and use of hydrogen over long distances where other systems are not sufficiently competitive. To load or hydrogenate typically requires two steps: the generation of hydrogen, preferably from electrolysis, and the subsequent hydrogenation of a liquid (such as Toluene, LOHC-) to form a hydrogenated compound (in this case Methylcyclohexane, LOHC+) with a partial degradation of energy in the form of heat. A research group at Yokohama National University is working on the direct conversion of toluene to cyclohexane at laboratory scale. In collaboration with this group, we are working on the characterisation of this process and the subsequent design of an energetically integrated system for the effective production of energy and on the comparative study with other hydrogen storage and transport systems.
Challenges met
- Hydrogen transport by hydrogenation and dehydrogenation in organic fluids.
- Use of direct electrochemical hydrogenation in a single stage.
- This method, studied at Yokohama National University, is still at laboratory scale. We are collaborating to make a practical design for larger scale applications and characterise its performance against other storage alternatives.
Scope of application
We are currently conducting research to establish validation parameters and feasibility of the technology as a treatment method for many different types of water, in particular:
- Urban/domestic: Influents from sewage treatment plants, sewage sludge, sludge centrifugation residues
- Industrial, water generated in processes related to production (food, pharmaceutical, paper, biodiesel, petrochemical industry, polymers)
- Effluents from agricultural and livestock farms: Farm slurry
Very promising preliminary results have been obtained, including hydrogen production data with many of the waters studied so far.
Main publications
- Journal of Power Sources, 554, 232304, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2022.232304
- Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, 938, 117431, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jelechem.2023.117431
Related projects
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COFUND-Martí-Franquès- URV Scholarship Program. Contract URV 2021MFP-COFUND-16 for the hiring of a predoctoral fellow – Green Hydrogen Storage using Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC) in polygeneration systems serving Smart Energy Grids.
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Margarita Salas Fellowship at Institute of Advanced Sciences of Yokohama National University (YNU)
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