A Review of Hydrogen Storage and Transport Technologies

An important component of the deep decarbonization of the worldwide energy system is to build up the large-scale utilization of hydrogen to substitute for fossil fuels in all sectors including industry, the electricity sector, transportation and heating. Hence, apart from reducing hydrogen production costs, establishing an efficient and suitable infrastructure for the storage, transportation and distribution of hydrogen becomes essential. This article provides a technically detailed overview of the state-of-the-art technologies for hydrogen infrastructure, including the physical- and material-based hydrogen storage technologies. Physical-based storage means the storage of hydrogen in its compressed gaseous, liquid or supercritical state. Hydrogen storage in the form of liquid-organic hydrogen carriers, metal hydrides or power fuels is denoted as material-based storage. Furthermore, primary ways to transport hydrogen, such as land transportation via trailer and pipeline, overseas shipping and some related commercial data, are reviewed. As the key results of this article, hydrogen storage and transportation technologies are compared with each other. This comparison provides recommendations for building appropriate hydrogen infrastructure systems according to different application scenarios.