Enagás is leading the transition towards a sustainable and decarbonised economy through a number of innovation projects focusing on renewable hydrogen, one of the up-and-coming solutions for the decarbonisation of the global energy system.
Below we examine the main initiatives that Enagás is involved in, ranging from underground storage to the transport and accurate metering of hydrogen.
One of the major challenges facing renewable hydrogen is its large-scale storage.
Enagás is taking part in the European project funded by FrHYGe, the European Clean Hydrogen Partnership programme that strive to demonstrate and grade the injection and withdrawal of hydrogen at two newly-built salt cavities in France, conduct the associated safety studies and develop the methodology to replicate hydrogen storage in these kinds of structure in the EU.
The PureH2 project, led by Enagás and financed by IDAE, focuses on developing a solution to purify hydrogen stored in salt cavities. This would facilitate, for example, the storage of any surplus renewable energy produced in spring for use in winter.
However, it isn’t enough to inject the hydrogen and wait, as it must first be purified using cutting-edge technologies. PureH2 is therefore researching new purification systems that can obtain hydrogen with the quality required for it to be reused in the network.
The project is focusing on the Ebro Basin, one of the regions whose geological characteristics allow for this kind of underground storage. It is regarded throughout Europe as a trailblazing initiative capable of resolving one of the bottlenecks of the energy transition: how and where to store clean energy when it isn’t needed.
Enagás has turned its Metrology and Innovation Centre in Zaragoza into a true European hydrogen laboratory with the Hyloop+ project. It strives to develop a meter calibration bench and a primary standard (HPPP, High Pressure Piston Prover) as a reference system to minimise the uncertainty of measurements and turn Hyloop+ into a trailblazing hydrogen laboratory in Europe.
This facility will provide the knowledge required to adapt existing pipelines to hydrogen and enable flow meters, valves and other devices to operate reliably. As a result of this project, Spain is boosting its capacity to generate proprietary knowledge of the circulation of hydrogen in existing networks and positioning itself as a flagship country for the future regulation of European standards.
Can the existing gas network be used to transport renewable hydrogen? GreenH2Pipes, one of the most ambitious projects led by Enagás and funded by CDTI in its MISSIONS programme, is studying how materials behave when hydrogen is injected into the existing gas network. The project includes the efficient design of the injection facility and the optimisation of the interconnection between the electricity grid, renewable hydrogen production and the gas network.
All these projects are collaborative, multi-disciplinary and aligned with European decarbonisation policies
One of the key challenges posed by the deployment of renewable hydrogen is how to cut down on its production and storage costs without undermining its efficiency. In this area, the project focuses on designing new components for PEM electrolysers based on national technology. These electrolysers are essential for generating hydrogen from renewable sources by means of water electrolysis.
The project also addresses the challenge of storage by investigating new catalytic materials that allow the hydrogen to be stored in the form of organic liquids. This solution, still under development, has the potential to reduce the energy required for the charging and discharging phases while increasing the lifetime of the storage systems.
Through a series of tests, the PilgrHym project, funded by the European Clean Hydrogen Partnership programme, is assessing how transporting hydrogen affects steels and welds in existing natural gas networks.
The results of the project will provide quantitative data with a view to revising rules, codes and standards, thus constituting a key step when it comes to assessing the compatibility of existing pipelines with hydrogen.
THOTH2, similarly funded by the European Clean Hydrogen Partnership programme, is working on specific methodologies and protocols to conduct tests on the metrological behaviour and durability of the existing measurement instruments in the gas network when they operate with pure hydrogen, as well as mixtures of natural gas and hydrogen to involve them in developing future hydrogen transport network measurements.
The H2FlowTrace project, funded by the European EURAMET programme, is seeking to establish a robust metrological infrastructure to measure the flow rate of pure hydrogen and mixtures of the latter and gas with high accuracy and traceability to the International System of Units. The results of the project will lead to establishing a reference standard for cubic metres of hydrogen.
Shimmer, funded by the European Clean Hydrogen Partnership programme, is aiming to gather information on the impact of hydrogen on existing natural gas systems, methods for monitoring the integrity of these pipelines and current leak detection systems.
HyStoreNew, financed by CDTI as part of its CIEN programme, is a project that covers different issues associated with the development of hydrogen, including the application of satellite technologies to monitor the geological risks faced by infrastructures and the development of liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs) and the infrastructures required for the deployment of hydrogen in Spain.
All these projects have a common approach; they are collaborative, multi-disciplinary and aligned with European decarbonisation policies, and most of them have been selected for European funding under the Clean Hydrogen Partnership or Euramet programmes. Enagás works closely with research centres, technological SMEs, universities and industrial partners to turn innovation into real solutions for the hydrogen economy.
