IEC/TC 105 Opportunities

by Karen Quackenbush, FCHEA

IEC TC 105 has issued a Call for Convenor (Chair) for IEC TC 105 Maintenance Team (MT) 201.

IEC TC 105 MT 201 oversees the development of IEC 62282-3-100 - Fuel Cell Technologies – Part 3-100: Stationary Fuel Cell Power System – Safety.

In addition, there is an opening for the IEC/TC 105 US TAG Technical Advisor role.

If you are interested in being nominated for either of these positions, please contact Mark Duda of CSA at mark.duda@csagroup.org as soon as possible. He is happy to discuss the roles, responsibilities, and requirements of the positions.

Finally, IEC/TC 105 will hold a Plenary Meeting in Teddington, UK, on September 23-27, 2024. Please watch for a report of highlights of this meeting in our November edition of the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Safety Report.

DOE Announces Projects to Improve Hydrogen Permitting and Safety Processes

By Aidan Dennehy

The Department of Energy (DOE) is providing seven projects $1 million each to identify the main challenges to siting, permitting, and installation for facilities involved all aspects of the hydrogen supply chain and explore potential solutions. These projects were announced as part of the wider Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office Funding Opportunity Announcement to Advance the National Clean Hydrogen Strategy.

The following is a list of the selected project leads and their descriptions:

GE Vernova Operations LLC in Greenville, South Carolina:

  • AI Assistant for Permitting and Safety Training for Hydrogen Deployment: This project will use artificial intelligence to address licensing issues to use the most up to date codes and standards and focus on hydrogen infrastructure. The project includes a K-12 education component and a permanent hydrogen exhibit at a community center.

Southern Gas Company in Atlanta, Georgia:

  • Developing Permitting Guidelines for Hydrogen Refuelling Stations in Georgia: The project will develop siting and permitting guidelines specific to Georgia and create an interactive tool to guide stakeholders through the siting and permitting process for hydrogen fuelling stations.

Krueger Transport LLC in Avondale, Arizona:

  • Empowering Hydrogen Futures: Advancing Permitting, Safety, and Deployment Strategies for Sustainable Hydrogen Infrastructure in New York State: This project will develop a comprehensive approach to hydrogen permitting and safety inclusive of authorities having jurisdiction. Additional project work includes a strong community engagement team developing education and information resources for permitters, local government, safety officials, and community members in the New York City metropolitan and greater New York areas.

American Institute of Chemical Engineers in New York, New York

  • First Responder Hydrogen Training: Streamlining Permitting and Safety for Hydrogen Development: This project will develop and broadly disseminate accessible training resources to the nation's first responders by providing a refined first responder hydrogen safety national training template, nationally scalable train-the-trainer events and instructor-led courses, and remotely accessible eLearning.

The University of California at Riverside in Riverside, California:

  • Hydrogen Permitting Issues and Improvement Studies: This project will identify and address technological and administrative barriers to permitting hydrogen projects. The project focuses on providing safety and risk analysis for select use-cases and real-world data on at-scale issues and concerns to improve integration into existing industrial infrastructure. The project includes a community engagement strategy where local representatives from disadvantaged communities are engaged early in the process to identify challenges and mitigation measures to ensure success.

National Association of State Energy Officials in Arlington, Virginia

  • Powering Up for Clean Hydrogen: Supporting States in Decarbonizing the Medium- and Heavy-Duty Transportation Sector through State and Community Coordination on Permitting and Safety: This project will develop educational and modeling resources related to hydrogen safety and permitting, taking state policy and regulatory considerations from multiple jurisdictions into account, and facilitate equitable community engagement strategies to be disseminated and replicated nationally. Project deliverables include hydrogen safety content and training for first responders.

International Code Council, Inc. in Washington, DC:

  • Streamlining Permitting and Safety for Hydrogen Deployment: This project will develop and broadly disseminate accessible educational permitting resources, including best practices, guides and checklists, case studies, and lessons learned, to the nation's permitting officials across 17 states.

For more information about the funding opportunity and selected projects, click HERE.

DOE Requesting Stakeholder Input on a Potential Hydrogen/Natural Gas Blending Test Facility

By Aidan Dennehy

The Department of Energy (DOE) is requesting commercial stakeholder input on a potential hydrogen and natural gas blending test facility. The DOE is seeking input to help it better understand whether there is a need for such a facility and if so, how to design it to best meet those needs. Lead researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories, working together as part of the HyBlend Pipeline Blending Cooperative Research & Development Agreement (CRADA), have assembled a survey on behalf of the DOE.

The results of the survey will help inform potential future DOE activities regarding hydrogen and natural gas blending. The deadline for submitting input is Wednesday, September 25. Click HERE to fill out the survey.

California Legislature Approves Bill to Streamline Hydrogen Permitting

By Aidan Dennehy

On August 31, both chambers of California’s Legislature passed SB 1420, Hydrogen Production Facilities: Certification and Environmental Review. The bill now heads to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk for his signature. Once enacted into law, SB 1420 would expedite the permitting process for certain hydrogen projects in the state.

SB 1420 makes changes to the eligibility for two programs in the state to speed up implementation, permitting, and deployment of infrastructure programs. First, it expands the types of facilities eligible to benefit from a special authority granted to the Governor to expedite judicial review of infrastructure projects. Second, it expands qualifying facilities within the California Environmental Qualify Act (CEQA) which oversees environmental reviews and permitting for facilities under the California Energy Commission’s (CEC) authority.  Both of these initiatives would now include certain hydrogen production, associated onsite storage, and processing facilities.

To qualify, the hydrogen projects must already receive funding from specified state and federal energy infrastructure programs, including the federal Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub program.  In addition, the hydrogen project must not derive hydrogen from a fossil fuel feedstock.

To learn more about the bill, click HERE.

Center for Hydrogen Safety Issues Call for Nominations for Annual Hydrogen Safety Awards

By Aidan Dennehy

The Center for Hydrogen Safety (CHS) is requesting nominations for the annual Robert Zalosh Hydrogen Safety Excellence Awards. These awards recognize individuals, organizations, or projects that have made a positive impact on safety practices within the hydrogen industry. The awards are named after Dr. Robert Zalosh, whose 20 year-long career left a lasting impact on the field of hydrogen and fuel cell safety.

The individual award recognizes major contributions to hydrogen safety made by individuals over a lifetime. The project award recognizes groups of people who have made worked on impactful projects over the past year. The organization award recognizes academic institutions, companies, government entities, or other organizations that have demonstrated a commitment to hydrogen safety.

The deadline to make a nomination is Thursday, October 31. Nominations are reviewed by the CHS Award Selection Committee which will announce the awardees on March 1, 2025. Click HERE for more information about submitting a nomination.

DOE’s ARPA-E Announces Projects to Improve Hydrogen Leak Detection Methods

By Aidan Dennehy

The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced it will fund 9 projects with $18 million to improve methods used to detect hydrogen leakage. This initiative is part of the H2SENSE Exploratory Topic M, one of several funding opportunities created by ARPA-E to support early-stage innovation in new areas. The Exploratory Topic funding supports disruptive research and allows ARPA-E to investigate topic areas in which a full focused larger-scale program may later be developed.

Current hydrogen detection methods primarily use sensors which detect levels of hydrogen leakage that pose a fire hazard. The H2SENSE projects will work to create new sensors that can detect and quantify hydrogen leaks at concentrations that are lower than what would constitute a fire hazard but still have a climate impact. To do so, this new generation of sensors will detect leaks at a level of parts per billion volume instead of the parts per million volume level which current sensors typically work on.

The following is a list of the selected project leads and their descriptions:

GE Vernova Advanced Research Center – Niskayuna, New York

  • H2-LOCATE: H2 Leak LOCAlization and QuanTification Using Physics-Enhanced Analytics and Fence-Line Monitoring - $2,700,000

  • This project will implement a high-fidelity and cost-effective gas sensing technology based on dielectric excitation of sensing materials and will couple it with physics enhanced analytics to detect and identify hydrogen leaks at industrial sites. The localization capability will differentiate and rank multiple leaks with a spatial resolution within 10 meters of actual leak locations. This project will deploy hydrogen leak monitors with a 5-10 parts per billion detection sensitivity.

Colorado State University – Fort Collins, Colorado

  • Hydrogen Emissions Monitoring System Based on Trace Gas PARS Sensor - $1,954,931

  • Colorado State University will develop and validate a hydrogen point sensor based on photoacoustic stimulated Raman spectroscopy for trace detection of hydrogen in the atmosphere with a lower limit of detection of 1 part per million in 5 seconds. The analytics method will be tailored to the complexity of a given site, with an inverse modeling approach for simple sites and a tracer co-release method for more complex sites.

National Energy Technology Laboratory – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  • Novel Fiber Optic Sensor Systems and AI-Driven Methods for Hydrogen Pipeline Emission Quantification - $1,700,000

  • National Energy Technology Laboratory will develop and field validate novel distributed fiber optic sensors installed on the pipeline and an AI-driven pipeline-specific quantification method called H2-SMART to locate and quantify hydrogen emissions from hydrogen pipelines. The novel fiber optic-based sensors are selective for hydrogen and offer kilometer-scale distance coverage for large-area emissions monitoring.

University of Wisconsin-Madison – Madison, Wisconsin

  • Large-Survey-Area H2 Leak Detector based on a Quadcopter-Mounted Laser Imager - $2,491,594

  • The University of Wisconsin-Madison will develop a precise hydrogen sensor and a novel laser-based system to image and record videos of hydrogen leaks. The laser-based system uses an inverse backscatter absorption gas imaging (iBAGI) technique to quantitatively image hydrogen plumes with megapixel spatial detail. The iBAGI system can be mounted on a quadcopter to facilitate large-area emissions monitoring. Computer algorithms, data science, and computational fluid dynamics will be used on the videos to estimate leak rates.

Serinus Labs – Berkeley, California

  • Parts Per Billion Hydrogen Plume Emissions Reporting System (ppb-HyPERS) - $2,540,659

  • Serinus Labs will combine ultra-sensitive hydrogen sensors with ultra-reliable low power radios to produce wireless hydrogen sensor nodes, collectively forming a wireless ‘mesh’ network over outdoor areas. Sensor data will be combined with weather data and parsed using RTX Technology Research Center’s artificial intelligence framework that can identify and quantify hydrogen leaks.

Northeastern University – Boston, Massachusetts

  • Wireless Hydrogen Integrated Sensing via PiezoElectric Resonators and Switches (WHISPERS) - $2,430,000

  • Northeastern University will develop a platform that improves detection and localization of hydrogen emissions by integrating advanced miniaturized and near-zero power hydrogen sensing technology with sophisticated airflow modeling. The sensing nodes generate a detailed geographic heatmap of hydrogen concentrations and flow within the monitored area. The nodes can last for years on a small battery because they employ a zero-power electromechanical switch that activates the sensing module only when detecting elevated hydrogen levels.

Princeton University – Princeton, New Jersey

  • HydroNet: Integrated Photonic System for Hydrogen Leak Localization, Quantification and Monitoring - $1,700,000

  • Princeton University will develop hydrogen sensing capabilities based on novel spectroscopic advances with high selectivity and sensitivity. A dynamic sensor packaged on a drone will provide rapid leak quantification and localization to support the growth of the emerging hydrogen economy.

Aerodyne Research – Billerica, Massachusetts

  • Autonomous Method to Quantify and Localize Hydrogen Facility Emissions - $1,880,484

  • Aerodyne Research will develop a sensor system to locate and quantify hydrogen emissions. Tracer gases will be released, and machine learning software will control the sampling and tracer gases to produce live emissions results.

2Witech Solutions – Andover, Massachusetts

  • Hybridized High-Q Plasmonic Hydrogen Sensor - $1,000,000

  • 2Witech Solutions will develop the first mobile 20 parts per billion-level self-cleaning plasmonic hydrogen sensor system, which will improve sensitivity compared with current sensors by one order of magnitude. The system will use a plasmonic metasurface, a surface coating with excellent hydrogen permeation, for trace detection against varied environmental backgrounds.

For more information about the funding opportunity and selected projects, click HERE.