Colloquium: Tuur Knevels (FPT)

Utilising hydrogen as an efficient energy carrier often requires significant compression, resulting in a lot of potential energy stored in the gas. However, most of this potential energy is lost when the gas is expanded through a valve for its end use. This thesis focuses on recovering part of that potential energy via an expander, offering a conceptual 1D design and thermodynamic analysis of the cycle. The study evaluates potential applications and presents a system model simulating a hydrogen refuelling station centred around a turbo-expander. Loss models are applied to select a single design which performs the best across the entire operating range and this design is further validated using a 3D CFD simulation. The results show that this application has the potential for notable operational cost and energy savings and a final sensitivity analysis of the initial design parameters is presented to provide guidance for future work.

Supervisor: Dr. M. Pini