Industry
Energy, Resources & Utilities
Rebalance the energy equation
HIGHLIGHTS
- Amid the energy transition, global policies and regulations are also supporting the growth and transformation of the hydrogen economy and boosting renewables and green technologies.
- Countries have a vision of a clean, innovative, safe, and competitive hydrogen economy that benefits communities and positions them as global contributors to sustainability. EU, USA, Australia, and APAC countries have declared their hydrogen strategies, frameworks, and roadmaps.
- The enablement of financing, infrastructure investment, and apt digital technology deployment is the key to materializing policies and accelerating market adaptability.
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Hydrogen logistics
Storage and transport of hydrogen are becoming more significant as the hydrogen market evolves for applications in oil refining, ammonia and methanol production, steel, and the transport industry.
Hydrogen is also used to heat buildings, blend with natural gas, and fuel cells. What’s more, the growth of green hydrogen, which currently accounts for around 1% of global hydrogen production, is being positively influenced by geo-specific strategies, derisking financial commitments, and market reach.
Typically, hydrogen is stored in the form of compressed gas, liquid, ammonia, and metal hydrides in storage carriers. Standards and codes such as ISO Technical Committee 197, ASME B31.12 provide guidelines regarding the selection of design, equipment, production processes, and operation of plant, piping and pipelines, clearances between hydrogen installations, and nearby establishments.
Technology plays a critical role in ensuring the safe storage of hydrogen, applied to its fundamental nature of low volumetric energy density and flammability, and it is prone to leakage, diffusion, and embrittlement. Therefore, using smart sensors, the early detection of deterioration or leakage is necessary to avoid accidents and risks. While storage cylinders are made of austenitic stainless steel, copper, or aluminum alloys, deploying digital meters for condition monitoring is key to ensuring immunity to reaction and diffusion.
Tech-led transportation offers loss-free and uninterrupted service under rugged terrain, and contingencies such as extreme temperatures, heavy rain, and snow. A smart monitoring system enables this to ensure robust insulation and contaminant detection for proactive measures.
Tech-led optimization
How do technology and innovations help countries speed up their hydrogen goals?
Favorable national policies backed up with the latest technology and innovative practices result in increased momentum in green hydrogen investments and diversifying decarbonization for transportation, refinery, chemical, and other industries. Let’s see how digital innovations enable modernization, optimization, and safety to accelerate nations’ priority commitments toward hydrogen.
Design optimization with digital twin and 3D design technology
Digital twin offers advanced modelling and simulations, bringing modularity to design. It enables multiple options for processes and materials and simulates asset performance under critical environmental conditions to ensure efficient and risk-free operations.
3D technology provides an environment for exploring options for reusable, reconfigurable, economic, and sustainable designs, unlocking rapid scalability, repeatability, and reusability.
Optimized operations via advanced control
Smart meters, process control systems, and digital control systems ensure the capture of anomalies, trigger alarms, and take intelligent control actions, significantly reducing energy use, hydrogen loss, and flaring, optimizing operations, and ensuring safety.
Energy management
Around 0.7 kWh/kg of hydrogen is required for compressing hydrogen from 20 to 200 bars for storage and transportation, and about 10 kWh/kg of hydrogen is estimated for the liquefaction process.
The high energy demand and energy loss across the value chain attract attention towards energy efficiency and management. Let us also consider the energy demand for auxiliaries, flash gas management, losses, and boil-off during the liquefaction process.
With green hydrogen, there is a significant loss during stagewise conversions such as the electrolysis process, liquefaction, converting hydrogen into other carrier compounds, etc. Therefore, there is a huge scope to minimize the energy loss and achieve energy efficiency.
Leveraging IoT and smart meters, it is possible to continuously monitor energy consumption. Data-driven energy auditing enables identifying hotspots and addressing the key reasons for high energy consumption and energy loss. The optimized design of greenfield projects, as well as the digitalization of brownfield projects with the selection of energy-efficient equipment with proper sizing, ensures the optimum operation of the plants.
Asset monitoring
Ensuring safety while having efficient and sustainable operations is imperative from a business continuity perspective as well as regulatory mandates.
Besides a typical static inspection, repair, and maintenance cycle, today we emphasize building an intelligent situation-aware system by leveraging data from IoTs and sensors to track operations in real time, monitor and assess wear and tear, degradation, embrittlement, and prepare a dynamic schedule of preventive actions.
A data-driven AI model can compute the health index and risk index of plants, equipment, valves, vessels, compressors, storage tanks (compressed or liquefied hydrogen), and purification systems, and appropriately trigger the dynamic work schedule.
The data-driven advisory prescriptive systems provide operational insights, resulting in overall optimized asset management and field force management, improving reliability and security, and achieving cost optimization.
The smart situation-aware system also triggers an emergency response in case of a contingency situation, facilitating quick and effective support.
The ultimate benefits are maximum availability and uptime of the hydrogen value chain.
Safety and risk control
Environmental, internal, and hydrogen-reaction embrittlement result in risky situations.
Hydrogen is prone to leak through very small gaps and permeate certain materials. Hence, risk management is a key priority of the hydrogen value chain.
Leak detectors, flame detectors, flow controllers, sensors, and digital systems can detect leaks in storage tanks and pipelines, enabling prompt responses and actions to ensure safety.
The safety-first approach, empowered by the digital governance system, ensures diligent implementation of safety practices and protocols, minimizing the risk of accidents, interruptions, etc.
Today, national priorities around hydrogen are influencing industrial behavior, global hydrogen demand, and new opportunities of decarbonization. Therefore, readiness towards digital transformation is a way forward to an affordable, scalable, and efficient hydrogen economy, reimagining engineering with sustainability.
