GKN Hydrogen is looking to find the best use cases for its metal hydride hydrogen storage technology in a demonstration project with the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Located at NREL’s Flatirons Campus in Colorado, the project is using GKN’s solid-state storage technology to evaluate the technology’s performance and integration with systems such as microgrids and fuel cells.
Katherine Hurst, NREL’s head investigator for the project, said, “This project will be the world’s largest hydrogen storage system connected to renewable energy, and the findings could be integral to advancing the interoperability of hydrogen technologies and renewable energies at scale.”
Aimed at uncovering the “most beneficial” use cases for the technology, the project will store up to 500kg of hydrogen by binding molecules in the GKN metal hydride at low pressures.
Supported by $1.7m from the DOE, as well as $400,000 from Californian utility SoCalGas, the project is scheduled to run until December 2026.
“Our storage systems promise significant potential benefits in the areas of safety, footprint and operational and maintenance costs,” said Jim Pertrecky, Chief Commercial Officer at GKN Hydrogen.
“Evaluating commercial use cases will be key to identifying deployment strategies as the hydrogen economy continues to scale up and production costs continue to fall.”
The team of researchers will use NREL’s Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform to validate commercial and industrial applications.
Having been acquired by Italian-based Langley Holdings in August, GKN has been widening its demonstration deployments in recent years.
Read more:Hydride storage provider GKN Hydrogen acquired by Langley Holdings
Described as “metal in a box,” the technology absorbs and releases hydrogen from the hydride using heat, promising to store the energy carrier at “16x the density of compressed hydrogen gas without degradation for up to 30 years.”
The potential of metal hydride storage
© GKN Hydrogen
GKN Hydrogen’s Vice-President Sales & Business Development, Jim Petrecky, has described the company’s hydrogen storage solution as essentially “metal in a box”.
While it is indeed accurate to say the company develops metal hydride compounds for hydrogen storage, which enable the absorption and release of hydrogen for applications and small and large-scale industrial operations, 10 years on from its R&D launch, its remit is increasingly broadening.
In these digital times, it is focused on producing “smart hydrogen storage solutions” that plug into the wider hydrogen industry ecosystem.
Following 15 years at Plug Power and four years with PDC Machines, Petrecky joined GKN Hydrogen in 2022, as he believes storage solutions are the key “to making the hydrogen ecosystem work…
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