Hydrogen: Clean, Safe and Secure

Hydrogen plays a cru­cial role in energy tran­si­tion and cli­mate neu­trality. The energy car­rier is used in industry, for example, when steel­making, in the glass industry, for mobility as fuel for trans­port vehi­cles or for recon­ver­sion to elec­tricity. How­ever, there are some safety risks involved with hydrogen because the gas is highly flam­mable, as well as colour­less and odour­less. Acci­dents during pro­duc­tion, trans­port or use can have major con­se­quences for human, plant and envi­ron­ment.

In the hydrogen industry, the solu­tions to safety tasks have fre­quently involved mate­rial prop­er­ties and appro­priate mechan­ical dimen­sioning. The more robust the shut-off valves, for example, the safer they are to use. Proven solu­tions from automa­tion tech­nology add to these classic safety func­tions. That’s because they help to always con­sider safety as an inte­gral func­tion of the plant, machinery and the cor­re­la­tions in the process. Thus automa­tion solu­tions can take on the task of dynamic pres­sure and tem­per­a­ture mon­i­toring or safe com­pli­ance with load limits of down­stream struc­tures, for example.  

Safety from production through to use 

“From hydrogen pro­duc­tion through to its use – our holistic safety solu­tions offer added ben­e­fits for the whole hydrogen value chain”, Albert Cot, Market Devel­op­ment Engi­neer at Pilz, is keen to stress. He explains: “Our con­trol sys­tems reli­ably detect gas leaks through the eval­u­a­tion of gas detec­tors. They safely mon­itor tem­per­a­ture, pres­sure, fill level, voltage and cur­rent. And in an emer­gency the sys­tems ini­tiate an emer­gency stop. They can detect faults within mil­lisec­onds and quickly ini­tiate pre-defined safety mea­sures.”  

Automation solutions from Pilz for the hydrogen industry – Benefits at a glance

• Con­trol and mon­i­toring of all safety-related func­tions
• Mon­i­toring of safety func­tions such as pres­sure, tem­per­a­ture, cur­rent, voltage and leak, gas and flame detec­tion
• Cer­ti­fied hard­ware: PNOZ­multi 2 and PSS 4000 cer­ti­fied up to SIL 3 in accor­dance with EN IEC 61511; sat­isfy the require­ment according to EN IEC 61508
• Intu­itive soft­ware tool: con­fig­urable func­tion blocks – no pro­gram­ming skills required
• High pro­duc­tivity through inte­grated diag­nos­tics and com­pre­hen­sive visu­al­i­sa­tion options

These safety func­tions are essen­tial on a hydrogen refu­elling sta­tion, for example. This con­sists of a com­pres­sion area in which the gas can be com­pressed up to 1000 bar, a cooling system, high-pres­sure storage tanks and finally the fuel pump. In France, our automa­tion system PSS 4000 already guar­an­tees safety when hydrogen is dis­pensed at almost ten public refu­elling sta­tions.   

Holistic approach to Safety and Security 

A holistic approach includes not just func­tional safety but also Indus­trial Secu­rity. This describes the pro­tec­tion of pro­duc­tion and indus­trial plants from manip­u­la­tion or misuse – whether inten­tional or oth­er­wise. If attackers have the oppor­tu­nity to pen­e­trate automa­tion and con­trol sys­tems, the safety of the plant, and ulti­mately the safety of human and envi­ron­ment also, can be put at risk. One example is a remote con­nec­tion to a con­tainer for hydrogen pro­duc­tion, to check the system status. This con­nec­tion must be pro­tected, oth­er­wise the safety-related part of the system can be con­trolled or mod­i­fied without autho­ri­sa­tion. The Secu­ri­ty­Bridge indus­trial fire­wall from Pilz pre­vents this. Within the con­trol net­work, all con­nec­tions between the engi­neering, diag­nostic or con­fig­u­ra­tion tools and the con­trollers are pro­tected against manip­u­la­tion and enable secure external con­nec­tions. With the access per­mis­sion system PITreader and cor­re­sponding RFID transponder keys, the plants can be pro­tected against unau­tho­rised access. Access per­mis­sions can also be con­trolled reli­ably and indi­vid­u­ally, because all oper­ator actions can only take place once per­mis­sion has been checked and approved.