Hydrogen Storage
Another challenge for the entire hydrogen supply chain and specifically for car manufacturers is storage. Hydrogen must be stored at high pressure, because hydrogen has a low density.
Tanks, dedicated to the accumulation or storage of hydrogen, must therefore be robust and made of composite materials to allow safe and efficient storage. These tanks and their components must also meet very stringent requirements, for this reason they are subjected to a wide range of tests under extreme conditions.
Kiwa's hydrogen laboratory has been testing automotive tanks for more than a decade now and has recently invested in doubling the lab's capacity in anticipation of a large increase in hydrogen vehicles as part of the energy transition.
Kiwa services for Hydrogen storage
Kiwa, thanks to our experience in the gas sector and our wide knowledge obtained in the recent years at national and international level, can support hydrogen storage processes with the following services:
- Testing, Inspection and Certification to ensure quality, safety and performance of high-pressure components, e.g. process and storage tanks
- Pressure Equipment Directive, Inspection and Certification (PED)
- Non-destructive testing
- Technical and financial audits to identify risks and opportunities of Hydrogen storage tank, geological storage and bullet storage projects
- Ranking of materials among candidate materials
- Safety and economic assessment
- Design review of Hydrogen storage
- Technical assessment on rock cavern Hydrogen storage and Hydrogen Pressure equipment (including analysis of fatigue and structural integrity of the steel lining to ensure storage design lifetime, assessment of the effects of load cases and pressure cycles, evaluation of the hydrogen influence on embrittlement and fatigue of welded steels, probabilistic analysis using MCS, and deterministic requirements for weld defects that must be detected at the manufacturing QA)
- Technical and financial Due Diligence for Hydrogen storage applications, with independent evaluations on projects
- Analysis of energy demand and demand profiles, including matching demand to supply, rate of response of energy generation technology, influence of storage capacity, managing annual and diurnal intermittency of demand – against relevant markets and total values