Hydrogen technologies are considered to be pioneering for climate-neutral mobility, a sustainable energy industry, and a sustainable chemical industry. At the Fraunhofer ITWM, there are manifold competences for modeling, simulation, and optimization along the entire value chain of hydrogen technology. This includes the topics of generation, storage, distribution, and especially their use as alternative propulsion systems as well as mobile energy storage. In the project TPC-H2-Storage – Hydrogen Technologies, the Leibniz Institute for Composite Materials IVW is working on a hydrogen storage and transport technology suitable for large-scale production.
The research work in the performance center focuses on the following topics:
Hydrogen-Based Propulsion Systems
- Analysis and optimization of hydrogen-based propulsion concepts with regard to energy efficiency, ranges and infrastructure requirements
- Simulation of cables, hoses and, in particular, hydrogen-carrying lines
- Filling and emptying of hydrogen tanks
Hydrogen Production, Storage and Distribution
- Electrolysis for the production of hydrogen, especially during fluctuations in the availability of green electricity.
- New storage media in the form of liquids in which hydrogen as a gas has high solubility
- Software for the management of customer systems that obtain their energy from different sources
- Simulation of distribution networks
Hydrogen Storage and Hydrogen Transport
Current metallic solutions for hydrogen storage and transport are too heavy for mobile applications and available lightweight solutions made of reinforced thermoset plastics are not sufficiently capable of large-scale production. Therefore, the IVW is establishing a suitable infrastructure for the development of large-scale hydrogen storage and transport technologies based on thermoplastic fiber composites.
Intensive Networking in the Performance Center
In Transfer Center 2: »Mobility«, the Fraunhofer ITWM cooperates with various chairs in mechanical engineering and mathematics at the RPTU Kaiserslautern, the Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences, and with the automotive industry, and in Transfer Center 1: »Process Engineering/Chemistry« with mathematics and process engineering at the RPTU Kaiserslautern and the chemical industry. The research work of the IVW is located in R&D Lab 1: »Digial Twins«.