BAM inicia las pruebas con una estación de servicio de hidrógeno de investigación con monitorización digital

According to BAM, it is the only H2 research filling station of its kind in Germany. It was built at the Technical Safety Test Site (TTS) in Horstwalde/Baruth, Brandenburg, where BAM has been conducting full-scale experiments since the early 1990s. The facility allows all technical processes involved in a hydrogen filling station to be tested under realistic conditions, while safety aspects such as leaks and material stress can be thoroughly investigated.

“The plant enables us to optimise innovative digital technologies for process monitoring, quality assurance and maintenance planning,” the institute states. The results are expected to significantly improve the availability and cost-effectiveness of such facilities and thus increase public acceptance of hydrogen infrastructure.

The BAM research station is supplied with green hydrogen from its own electrolyser, which will later be powered by electricity from a photovoltaic system. Until then, green hydrogen will be delivered. All processes can be monitored online in real time, with sensors capturing operational data for use in digital models and twins.

“In partnership projects with industry and academia, we want to address quality and safety-related research questions,” says Frank Wille, Head of the Dangerous Goods Packaging and Energy Storage division at BAM. “We aim to optimise maintenance cycles, detect critical conditions at an early stage and further develop quality and safety standards for reliable hydrogen filling stations. At the same time, the research station serves as an ideal real-world lab for testing all elements of future digital quality assurance.”

The pilot is part of the ‘Digital Quality Infrastructure’ initiative and embedded in BAM’s hydrogen competence centre (H2Safety@BAM), where it researches safety aspects of modern hydrogen technologies. The real-world lab is open to industry, SMEs and startups to test newly developed digital products within an actual H2 infrastructure.

Planned research topics include:

• digital process mapping along the entire filling station value chain;
• sensor-based data acquisition and analysis; data infrastructure development; digital twin creation; online safety monitoring;
• developing digital structural elements for quality infrastructure (QI) such as the QI cloud and digital certificates;
• predictive maintenance for condition and ageing monitoring; and use of administration shells as QI tools

The actual filling station at the test site in Brandenburg consists of a compressor, buffer storage tanks, gas coolers and dispensers for supplying hydrogen to a vehicle. The “customer” is a hydrogen-powered FCEV. Based on a press photo provided by BAM, it appears to be a Hyundai Nexo.

An important project aspect is integrating process control technology and additional sensors on a local hardware platform. “Current concepts from process industries, such as NAMUR Open Architecture, are used,” the initiators state. Data collected will feed into digital models to generate further insights, update models and reparameterise hardware. This sub-project forms the link between the lab’s hardware and secure data provision at the QI data space interface.

bam.de (en alemán)