IVL studies possible options for storing and transporting hydrogen

I study “Handling of hydrogen in liquid form as LOHC from a shipping perspective” , Julia Hansson and Anders Hjort have taken a closer look at the initiatives and LOHC projects that exist today in the field. Anders Hjort works as a senior expert at IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and Julia Hansson works both as an expert at IVL and as a visiting researcher in maritime environmental science at Chalmers.

Hydrogen storage with liquid organic hydrogen carriers – LOHC

Hydrogen is one of the fuels of the future, and will also be able to play an important role in the transition of Gotland’s traffic. As a marine fuel, however, it takes up a lot of space and needs to be stored efficiently in order to be used in traffic. Several different variants are being investigated in shipping, cooling the hydrogen to liquid form or converting it to e-fuels, ammonia, methanol or methane – processes that are very energy-intensive.

One option is therefore to store hydrogen using Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC). This is a method of storing and transporting hydrogen safely and efficiently by chemically bonding the hydrogen to a liquid organic compound, a LOHC, which can be stored at room temperature.

– Hydrogen is a very interesting energy source with great potential, but it is also associated with challenges in terms of storage and transportation of the quantities needed. We therefore wanted to find out more about how the actual transportation and storage will work in practice. LOHC could be a possible way forward,” says Julia Hansson.

LOHC can also be transported to another location where the hydrogen can be recovered through a catalytic process, releasing the hydrogen which can then be used as fuel.

– LOHC can be an interesting option for some shipping applications, especially for short to medium distances where electrification is not possible,” says Anders Hjort.

Existing infrastructure can be used

One of the advantages of LOHC over other storage methods is that some of the existing infrastructure in ports can probably be used, such as tanks where liquid fuel or chemicals are handled today.

– There are several factors that indicate that parts of the existing infrastructure could be used for LOHC, which could reduce the financial risk compared to investing in completely new infrastructure. However, to gain a better understanding of the extent to which existing infrastructure could be used and what kind of investments need to be made, we need more studies,” says Anders Hjort.

More studies and pilot projects needed

Both Julia and Anders agree that more comparisons, analysis and testing of LOHC are needed before any definitive conclusions can be drawn about its potential compared to other hydrogen alternatives.

– We are positive about the characteristics of hydrogen, but it also remains to be seen for which applications it is suitable. We can’t be sure what the best option is until we have tested it.
We need more projects to test it out so that we can get enough data on what works and what doesn’t,” says Julia Hansson.

One of the areas that needs further investigation is which chemicals are best suited as hydrogen carriers. Some chemicals may be toxic or illegal in the EU, but legal in other geographies, and some chemicals require more heat than others for the hydrogen to be released from the LOHC.

Although more studies and pilot projects need to be carried out, the LOHC could be one of several possible options to overcome one of the major challenges of hydrogen – how to store and transport it. Gotlandsbolaget and Gotland Tech Development are working with several partners to study how the hydrogen infrastructure could be developed and scaled up.

About the study

The preliminary study “Handling of hydrogen in liquid form as LOHC from a shipping perspective” has been carried out within the Swedish Transport Administration’s Sustainable Shipping program, which Lighthouse runs, and was authored by Anders Hjort (IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute), Julia Hansson (IVL/Chalmers), Jenny Trinh (IVL), Desirée Grahn (IVL), Selma Brynolf (Chalmers) and Karl Jivén (IVL).

Gotland Tech Development is one of the actors that has been part of the study’s reference group.