Solid air hydrogen liquefaction, the missing link of the hydrogen economy

May 3, 2023

A group of researchers from various countries proposed an interesting solution to reduce the power consumption for hydrogen liquefaction.
Even not mentioned among the references, this solution has an ancestor proposed by one of the EnTraT partners. In 1993 at the 1st Conference on New Energy Systems and Conversions, in Yokohama (Japan), Giuseppe Spazzafumo presented the research entitled "Hydrogen energy storage: a specific plant for hydrogen liquefaction". This research proposed the idea of recovering the cold available during the re-gasification of hydrogen by liquefying air. The liquefied air would then be used to reduce energy consumption during the liquefaction of hydrogen at the time of storage.
The new proposal goes beyond the idea of 30 years ago, because it considers the possibility of bringing one of the two main components of the air, nitrogen or oxygen, into a solid form. This would allow for even better energy recovery, given that the solidification temperatures are closer to the liquefaction temperature of hydrogen. Obviously we would be dealing with cryogenic solids and this could create some more problems.

Source. IJHE