Hydrogen as the key to a climate-neutral factory: The Fraunhofer IWU in Chemnitz has installed a hydrogen power plant to investigate the climate-neutral energy supply of factories. The plant comprises an electrolyser, a hydrogen storage unit, a fuel cell and a battery storage unit and is intended to demonstrate the practicality of hydrogen as a decentralised storage technology.
How can the energy supply of factories be decarbonised without jeopardising the competitiveness of operations? A large number of individual technologies and energy supply and storage concepts already exist, but the economic viability or expertise for concrete planning and real operation is often still lacking. It is precisely this gap that the Fraunhofer IWU now wants to close with the hydrogen power plant.
The recently completed station consists of an electrolyser, a hydrogen storage unit, a fuel cell and an additional battery storage unit. Overall, it is roughly the size of a carport for two vehicles.
The hydrogen power plant is to be integrated into the energy supply of the research factory. The institute's own photovoltaic system supplies green energy, which the electrolyser uses to generate hydrogen. This is compressed by a compressor to up to 300 bar and stored in cylinder bundles.
Hydrogen as a decentralised storage technology
If the research factory needs electricity at times when the sun is not shining, the stored hydrogen is converted into electricity in the fuel cell system. A heat exchanger is used to utilise the waste heat generated by the fuel cell. The electrical energy produced in the fuel cell and not immediately consumed can be stored as required in an additional battery storage unit. All these components are housed in a compact structure directly behind the research factory.
The practical suitability of hydrogen as a decentralised storage technology is now to be demonstrated in several research projects. In this way, the Fraunhofer IWU aims to build up valuable practical knowledge, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Role of the hydrogen power plant for H2Mare
The team at Fraunhofer IWU sees the hydrogen power plant as an opportunity to gain directly realisable knowledge from a real, industry-relevant test setup.
The hydrogen power plant will also be used to validate models and simulations in sub-projects of the H2Mare hydrogen lead project. It also provides valuable results for the needs-based design of hydrogen-based energy supply systems.
