The First Demonstration Project of the Whole Industrial Chain for the Production, Storage, and Utilization of Civil Liquid Hydrogen in China Has Been Successfully Implemented

Hydrogen energy is the cleanest energy in the 21st century and can be widely used in important fields such as energy, transportation, and industry in the future. The industrial development of hydrogen energy faces many key issues, among which large-scale, low-cost, and long-distance transportation are bottlenecks. Liquid hydrogen has the advantages of high energy storage density, high transportation efficiency, low storage pressure, and high efficiency and safety. It is one of the effective means to solve the large-scale storage and transportation of hydrogen energy, and can greatly reduce the transportation cost and comprehensive cost of hydrogen. The ultra-high purity hydrogen produced by liquid hydrogen can meet the application in transportation, semiconductors, batteries and other fields to the maximum extent.

With the support of the key special project "Research on Key Equipment and Safety for Liquid Hydrogen Production, Storage, Transportation and Refueling" of the National Key R&D Program "Renewable Energy and Hydrogen Energy Technology", Fullcryo, as the leading unit, jointly with 9 units including the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Special Engineering Design Institute, Tongji University, China Special Equipment Inspection and Research Institute, CIMC SUNDY, Shanghai Shenghua Hydrogen Technology Co., Ltd., Pengli Cryogenic Technology Co., Ltd. of CSSC, and Xi'an Jiaotong University,  successfully built the first civilian liquid hydrogen production, storage and application full industrial chain demonstration project, forming a major demonstration of liquid hydrogen production, storage, transportation and full industrial chain in the field of hydrogen energy. The project has successfully achieved breakthroughs in six core key technologies: including

1) optimization of hydrogen liquefaction process flow of large-scale and efficient liquid hydrogen production equipment, integration of ortho-parahydrogen conversion and heat exchange, heavy-load hydrogen turbine expander, and integration and control technology;

2) liquid hydrogen production equipment assembly based on hydrogen refrigeration cycle and intelligent operation control technology;

3) overall structural safety design and insulation technology of large vacuum liquid hydrogen spherical tanks and liquid hydrogen tank trucks under large temperature difference alternating load conditions;

4) on-site construction technology of large liquid hydrogen spherical tanks;

5) efficient compression and rapid filling technology based on liquid hydrogen storage;

6) key technologies for safety risk assessment and prevention of hydrogen liquefaction, storage, and filling.

The project successfully built the first full-industry chain demonstration project for the production, storage, transportation and use of civilian liquid hydrogen, including: a civilian liquid hydrogen plant built based on domestically produced low-energy consumption liquid hydrogen production equipment (achieving a maximum adiabatic efficiency of 83.52% for the turbine expander, an independent and controllable integrated and control process package, a liquefaction capacity of 5.27 tons/day under rated conditions, a hydrogen liquefaction energy consumption of 11.8 kW·h/kg-LH2, and a product liquid hydrogen parahydrogen content that meets GB/T 40045-2021 and GJB 5405-2005 standard requirements, the actual measured value under various load conditions is greater than 96%, the purity is 99.99996%, and the reliability test of liquefaction equipment is run for more than 168 hours); 400m3 high vacuum multi-layer insulated liquid hydrogen spherical tank and 40m3 liquid hydrogen transport tanker; liquid hydrogen storage type gas hydrogen filling station (successfully developed liquid hydrogen booster pump pressurization gasification system, output pressure 45.2MPa; with 35MPa and 70MPa hydrogen filling capacity; station liquid hydrogen storage capacity of 1136.4kg, peak hydrogenation capacity of 1024.2kg/day, hydrogen filling energy consumption reaches 0.6kWh/kg-H2); integrated and intelligent liquid hydrogen plant and liquid hydrogen filling station safety risk remote monitoring and early warning platform.

The successful demonstration of this project has built a complete innovation chain covering domestic liquid hydrogen production, storage, transportation, hydrogenation and safety monitoring, solving the major problem of "national heavy equipment" being controlled by people, and realizing the independent control of the core technologies and key equipment of domestic civilian high-efficiency liquid hydrogen production equipment, high-performance low-evaporation rate large liquid hydrogen spherical tanks, civilian liquid hydrogen tank trucks, liquid hydrogen storage gas hydrogen filling stations and safety risk remote monitoring and early warning platforms. The product performance has reached the advanced level of the industry, forming a major demonstration achievement of the entire industrial chain of liquid hydrogen production, storage, transportation and hydrogenation in the field of hydrogen energy, which will strongly promote the large-scale promotion of hydrogen fuel commercial vehicles, China's green hydrogen energy application and independent and controllable development in the field of aerospace strategy. With the large-scale application of hydrogen energy, the deep integration of liquid hydrogen and renewable energy hydrogen production technology can solve problems such as intermittent energy storage of new energy and help achieve the goal of carbon neutrality.