Representatives pose for a group photo at a meeting to appraise scientific payoffs of a hydrogen station project on Oct 14 in Lanpec Technologies Limited. [Photo/sinomach.com.cn]

With the constant consumption of fossil energy and the increasingly prominent environmental problems, the development and utilization of renewable energy has become a strategic direction of energy power transformation in many countries and regions.

In that situation, hydrogen energy characterized by extensive sources, high combustion value and zero carbon dioxide emission is spotlighted in the field of clean energy. And the strengthened infrastructure construction such as hydrogen refueling stations is now pretty much on the agenda for future hydrogen energy development.

Lanpec Technologies Limited (Lanpec), a subsidiary of Sinomach, and the Zhangjiagang Industrial Technology Research Institute, affiliated to the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have worked together on the world’s first hydrogen demonstration station, which will use solar energy to electrolyze water and generate hydrogen.

The results of the project were appraised by the China Association for the Promotion of Industrial Development on Oct 14. The experts unanimously approved the project due to its international advanced design concept and technical level, and suggested speeding up its promotion and application.

The project is designed to build safer and more efficient integrated equipment for hydrogen production, purification, storage and transfer to vehicles, and to provide for carbon dioxide liquefaction and recycling. In the process, hydrogen is produced from the electrolysis of water powered by solar or other renewable energy, and then stored in a liquid state, eliminating the need for large tanks and getting rid of explosion risks.

Lanpec was in charge of the project’s engineering design, modular unit development, safety analysis and equipment testing. The company has engaged in the research, development and design of relevant applied technologies for 60 years, and incubated its characteristic technologies into an industrial base.

It took about two years for Lanpec’s project team to complete the design of the whole process that will occur at a hydrogen station. In that process the purity of hydrogenation could reach 99.99 percent, 60 percent of carbon dioxide could be liquefied and recycled, and the conversion rate of water to gas might be 70 percent.

In the future, the company will continue to optimize the solution of hydrogenation equipment powered by renewable energy, and promote high-quality development of clean energy technologies.