Hydrogen

The development, deployment, and market utilization of hydrogen technologies for vehicle and stationary power applications is critical to achieving zero-emission, energy security, and CO₂ reduction goals and targets.  Sandia’s Hydrogen Program activities support the President’s all-of-the-above energy strategy, helping to diversify America’s energy sector and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Sandia’s overall approach:

• We provide leadership in critical hydrogen RD&D areas

–      In the near-term, our focus is on removing technical barriers and enhancing public acceptance of early-market fueling stations, vehicles, and power systems.

–      In the long-term, our focus is on de-carbonization of hydrogen fuel through renewables conversion, distributed generation, and energy storage RD&D.

• We seek to enhance our critical H2 science and technology capabilities to provide a national resource that supports innovation and US competitiveness.
• We emphasize critical partnerships with industry, labs, and universities to accelerate R&D and enhance national and international coordination through our Research, Engineering, and Applications Center for Hydrogen (REACH) Initiative at the Livermore Valley Open Campus.

Sandia’s Hydrogen Program includes the following elements:

• The Systems Analysis program element provides context for the development of hydrogen technologies through techno-economic modeling, gap analysis, and resource assessments.
• The Safety, Codes and Standards program element removes technical barriers to the deployment of H2 technology by coordinating the engineering, research and document development efforts of industry, labs, standards organizations and regulators.
• The Renewable Production program element develops low-cost, efficient technologies to produce H2 from concentrated solar and thermo-chemical conversion of biomass.
• The Delivery program element informs the design and operation of pipelines, delivery vessels, and stationary storage systems through leveraging critical H2 science and technology capabilities in materials behavior.
• The Storage program element provides the science and engineering understanding for vehicular, stationary and grid-scale storage.  The grid-scale storage element includes expertise in geologic storage of H2 as part of a production-to-demand systems analysis.
• The Fuel Cells program element develops advanced membrane and stack technologies that promise to improve reliability and reduce cost of fuel cell systems.
• The Integrated Systems program element leverages critical partnerships to develop and demonstrate integrated H2 technologies to transform the vehicle and power market.
• The Center for Infrastructure Research and Innovation (CIRI) is dedicated to the development and testing of innovative infrastructure technologies to accelerate market readiness.

Sandia’s leadership in hydrogen science, technology, and engineering is enabled by 50+ years of investment by DOE that supports the development of world-renowned expertise and experimental facilities.  Our strong partnerships with industry, labs, and academia makes Sandia the most effective organization in the research, development and demonstration of hydrogen technologies for transportation energy and stationary power applications.