Hydrogen is expected to be a clean energy source. However, if it has to be utilized as the energy source, huge amount of hydrogen has to be transported and/or stored, which suggests to treat hydrogen in liquid state. For this realization of the liquid hydrogen energy, a study of large hydrogen liquefaction process has to be conducted.
Based on the construction history of large hydrogen liquefaction plants and the process efficiency of various cryogenic plants studied by R. Strobridge, we set hydrogen liquefaction of 300t/day as the maximum capacity and as the target process efficiency, we set more than 40%.
Because there have been few studies about such a large hydrogen liquefaction process, the concrete process calculation was conducted. The processes studied were a hydrogen Claude cycle and a helium Brayton cycle, and in addition to these, a mix refrigerant cycle, neon cycle with a cryogenic compressor, and nelium (mixture of neon and helium) cycle were studied. As a result, though it was estimated that each cycle would achieve the process efficiency of more than 40%, a hydrogen Claude cycle was selected to be the most suitable process by the cost comparison.
Rough study about compressors and expansion turbines required in the hydrogen Claude cycle has been conducted to understand the required size and the technological issues to be developed. Though a turbocompressor is considered the most suitable for this large process, due to the small molecular weight of hydrogen, the development of the large hydrogen compressor will be one of the key issues. One of the solution, a compressor with small backward angle impellers is proposed.
This study was conducted in WE-NET project.
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