An important element of the European Hydrogen Strategy is the development of an international Hydrogen (H2) trade. In an established hydrogen economy, gaseous hydrogen can be ideally transported by pipelines and stored in geological reservoirs. Suitable geological conditions for underground storages do not exist in all EU member states, and pipelines are only partially suitable for transporting hydrogen. The bulk storage of hydrogen is a strategy to counteract this, as its large-scale storage and transport have significantly lower environmental and global-social requirements. For the bulk transport, Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) is attractive by its much higher volumetric energy density than compressed gaseous hydrogen (CGH) and making it the optimal choice for the bulk transport by ships. Furthermore, LH2 has several advantages compared to other derivates. It enables the cost-efficient reuse of the existing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) infrastructure, it offers the import of carbon-free pure hydrogen and enables the flexible distribution to sites where a pipeline infrastructure is not available. LH2 can thus provide a valuable contribution to the EU's energy supply security. However, large tanks for the storage of LH2 do not yet exist. There is a need for further mature concepts for the design and construction, which enable high availability and up-scaling.
In the EU-funded NICOLHy project, researchers from Germany, Italy, Greece and Norway work on a novel thermal insulation concept based on Vacuum Insulation Panels (VIP) that could enable the safe, cost- and energy-efficient storage of large quantities of LH2. Such large-scale LH2 storage technology is necessary to build tanks with capacities of 40.000 m³ to more than 200.000 m³ of LH2, as it is in application for the storage and transport of LNG today. New design concepts are needed because the currently available technologies used in small and medium storages have a long production time of several years due to the process chain, which also comes with difficulties for quality assurance. Due to the construction, the current concepts have a low failure tolerance, and a spherical shape, which reduces the payload by up to 65 % compared to other shapes used in the LNG trade today.
NICOLHy will develop concepts for the construction and thermal insulation of cryogenic tanks applicable for large-scale storages of LH2, that have about 80% lower cost and can be produced about 10-times faster compared to recent LH2 storage concepts on the targeted scale. NICOLHy also addresses to increase the quality assurance, safety, as well as the application on different tank shapes. This will be achieved by a close cooperation of NICOLHy partners from the material as well as safety perspective, and circularity, sustainability and scalability assessment. Summarizing NICOLHy aims to enable the soon scale up of LH2 tanks and its implementation into the world-wide trade.
