The Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) is expected to make a significant contribution to the distribution and safety of liquid hydrogen in Korea by developing the world's first device that can simultaneously produce liquid hydrogen and evaluate the performance of safety valves.

The Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute announced on the 31st that its hydrogen electric power research team recently developed a groundbreaking device that can perform everything from liquid hydrogen production to safety valve performance evaluation. It is expected to receive great attention from the industry as it is a meaningful achievement that came ahead of 'Hydrogen Day' (designated as November 2nd by visualizing the element symbol H2 for hydrogen) designated by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy to activate the hydrogen economy.

Liquid hydrogen is hydrogen gas that has been liquefied by cooling it to a very low temperature (-253 degrees Celsius). Its volume is 800 times smaller than that of the gaseous form, so it poses less risk of storage and is easy to secure public acceptance.

In terms of transportation, hydrogen can be transported in liquid form in much larger quantities more safely than when transporting existing gases, which can greatly expand the supply of hydrogen nationwide.

On the other hand, liquid hydrogen requires a lot of technical aspects, such as maintaining ultra-low temperatures during long-term storage and transport, and consistently managing the pressure inside the hydrogen tank, although production is important, and the quality of related parts is also very important.

Among these, the safety valve plays an important role in controlling the pressure by automatically releasing hydrogen in the form of high-pressure gas when the pressure inside the tank rises above a certain level and a danger arises.

The problem is that, in a situation where the production and distribution network for liquid hydrogen has not yet been fully established in Korea, it is difficult for safety valve manufacturers to completely verify product quality through their own efforts.

Because it is currently difficult to secure liquid hydrogen, companies have had no choice but to use expensive substitutes such as liquid nitrogen or liquid helium, which have a higher temperature than liquid hydrogen, to incompletely verify the performance of parts.

If a low-quality safety valve is commercialized without a clear demonstration of product performance under conditions where actual liquid hydrogen is sufficiently supplied, it could lead to a major accident in the future.

Accordingly, KERI has developed a groundbreaking device that can perform everything from liquid hydrogen production to safety valve performance evaluation.

If you only have one device, it's realWe have built a simple system that can produce liquid hydrogen and even evaluate the performance of its components.

Several years ago, the institute was already considered the only domestic institution capable of producing and long-term storing liquid hydrogen through an automatic cryogenic cooling technology called 'Zero Boil-off'.

Since then, we have made various efforts to expand hydrogen supply, and have succeeded in developing a device that links safety valve quality verification based on existing liquid hydrogen technology.

The device is designed to evaluate the performance of a safety valve for a 3-ton liquid hydrogen tank trailer, and is designed to be portable so that companies can easily install and operate it.

In addition, the safety of the device has been thoroughly verified in the explosion-proof test room of KERI, an internationally accredited power equipment testing and certification agency.

KERI Hydrogen Electric Power Research Team Leader Koh Rak-gil said, “Not only in Korea, but also overseas, safety valve performance evaluations in actual liquid hydrogen environments are not being properly conducted, which is raising concerns among experts.” He added, “With our developed device that can easily and safely produce liquid hydrogen even in narrow spaces and evaluate safety valves at the same time, we will be able to significantly increase the competitiveness of the domestic hydrogen industry.”

The researchers plan to further experiment to increase the functionality of the device so that it can handle higher pressures and hydrogen volumes.

In addition, we plan to actively reflect and accept the necessary requirements so that the device can be utilized in safety valve performance evaluations by authorized certification agencies such as Korea Gas Corporation.

In addition, we expect this achievement to attract a lot of attention from liquid hydrogen component manufacturers and evaluation equipment companies, and we aim to promote technology transfer as well.

Meanwhile, KERI is the National Science and ICT Research Institute of the Ministry of Science and ICT.It is a government-funded research institute under the Technology Research Council. This research was conducted through the 'Development and Demonstration Project of a 3,000kg Capacity Tank Trailer for Liquid Hydrogen Transport' project of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning.