Korea utility finds better storage for hydrogen

Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) announced earlier in March that its efforts to develop liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) technology is “moving forward,” and could make it possible for hydrogen to be stored in liquid form. The claim is that the new LOHC technology makes it possible to store far more of the gas in the same container size.

          One of the limitations on large-scale deployment of hydrogen as an energy storage technology is the limitations on how much of the gas can be stored under high pressure, typically at 5000 pounds per square inch, for example in an automobile fuel tank. KEPCO says the new liquid organic hydrogen carrier tech would make it possible to contain far more fuel in a single container than the current standard high-pressure compression storage tech.

          It wasn’t until this development, KEPCO says, that research moved beyond the most basic “1Nm3” level, referring to the volume of gas at an atmospheric pressure of 1 and a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius. KEPCO says it has now managed to verify that this new tech is capable of storing 20Nm3 hydrogen per hour.

          KEPCO has received a certificate for a liquid organic hydrogen carrier tech-based storage facility. The technology relies on storing H2 in liquid compounds through a reaction between hydrogen and dibenzyltoluene (DBT), a hydrogen storage liquid. Hydrogen will react with DBT and a catalyst under temperatures between 50 degrees and 180 degrees Celsius and pressure 50 times atmosphere pressure, to be absorbed and stored. Hydrogen will then react again with a catalyst under temperatures above 250 degrees Celsius and pressures 50 times above air pressure to separate again into its gaseous form, and the separated hydrogen storage liquid can be reused.

          For instance, if around 5 kilograms of H2 can be contained in a conventional hydrogen-fuelled car, 100 liters of liquid organic hydrogen carrier would be adequate to fully charge the car. KEPCO reports that a year’s storage results in no leakage.

          Original story in Hydrogen Fuel News, https://www.hydrogenfuelnews.com/kepco-develops-new-liquid-organic-hydrogen-carries-technology/8539584/