Sandia National Laboratories and Linde LLC have signed an umbrella Cooperative Research & Development Agreement (CRADA) that is expected to accelerate the development of low-carbon energy and industrial technologies, beginning with hydrogen and fuel cells. The CRADA will kick off with two new R&D projects to accelerate the expansion of hydrogen stations to continue to support the market growth of fuel cell electric vehicles now proliferating among the major auto manufacturers.
“We expect our investment with Sandia will lead to a broader consortium of other commercial partners. We’re happy to lead the way for industry, but ultimately we need others on board to join the effort to address barriers to entry of hydrogen fueling infrastructure,” said Nitin Natesan, business development manager at Linde. Last week, the company opened the first-ever, fully certified commercial hydrogen fueling station near Sacramento with support from the California Energy Commission.
With DOE support, the first project in the Sandia/Linde CRADA will demonstrate a hydrogen station that uses a performance-based design approach allowable under the National Fire Protection Association hydrogen technologies code, NFPA 2. “We know we can get hydrogen systems into more existing fueling facilities if our risk analyses show how they meet the code. This will help boost the developing fuel-cell electric vehicle market significantly,” said Sandia risk expert and fire protection engineer Chris LaFleur.
The second project under the new CRADA focuses on safety aspects of the NFPA code and entails the modeling of a liquid hydrogen release. “With Linde’s help, we’re developing a science-based approach for updating and improving the separation distances requirements for liquid hydrogen storage at fueling stations,” said LaFleur. Previous work only examined separation distances for gaseous hydrogen, she said, so validation experiments will now be done on the liquid model.
Source: Sandia National Laboratories
