Cluster F: Impact H2 green
Disciplines involved
Process engineering, landscape architecture, landscape planning, environmental sciences, computer science, economics
Motivation and goals of cluster F
The special feature of this cluster is the example of a reference energy park Autarkic Energy Park, which is used here centrally by all subprojects (SP) and which also represents a cross-cluster connecting element between all participating TP of the 4th Boysen-TUD-RTG. A sustainable hydrogen economy on a large scale - in the sense of a future GreenGas deal - is based on the sufficient availability of green hydrogen from renewable energy (RE) sources, especially wind and solar energy. The essential prerequisite for this is the exploitation of all wind and solar potentials from a technological-systemic, landscape, ecological and economic perspective for energy supply. It is unclear what the scope and impact of this will be on the technical system and the integrability of the generated power, and what interventions in the landscape and ecosystems will be associated with this. These must be assessed in advance as best as possible to avoid potential risks and minimize negative impacts.This raises a number of systemic, logistical, technical and economic issues. In addition to the impact of the wind and PV plants themselves, questions/consequences regarding expansion, sustainability especially with regard to the materials used and their recyclability, ecological effects, impact on the atmosphere, soil and water balance, the readiness of companies and the impact on the landscape should be answered. To this end, transparent and resilient framework conditions must be defined and simulation models developed for forecasting and subsequent monitoring.
Scientific added value sought in the cluster
In the cluster, the technological-systemic, landscape and ecological impacts are considered cumulatively in an innovative way. The results are combined across subprojects and in an integral sustainability monitoring concept for the evaluation of different RE expansion scenarios. In this way, local and regional expansion potentials are determined, taking into account technological-systemic, landscape and ecological limits.
The subprojects in detail
Cluster F combines a total of seven subprojects (SP F1 to SP F7).
In SP F1 - Technological-systemic impact of the hydrogen economy, the first step is to analyze the technological-systemic impact of the further expansion of renewable energies (RE) (wind and PV) for a green hydrogen economy. In a second sub-step, the material and raw material requirements for the further expansion of RE are determined. For this purpose, sustainability concepts and concepts for recycling, as well as for suitable processes and plants will be developed. In the third step, the direct interaction of wind and PV plants with each other as well as with the environment will be investigated. For this purpose, thermodynamic evaluations of exemplary wind and solar projects using the example of the Autarkic Energy Park will be used, taking into account local conditions. The Chair of Energy Process Engineering of the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the TU Dresden (Prof. Michael Beckmann) is responsible for the technical supervision.
The use of green hydrogen will be associated with a further expansion of RE. In SP F2 - Landscape and energy transition, empirical investigations will be carried out to determine which factors significantly influence the acceptance of wind energy and PV plants in the landscape and which innovative possibilities exist for an acceptable landscape design. From this, suitable planning strategies for a landscape-related implementation of the hydrogen strategy are to be derived on the basis of the Autarkic Energy Park. This sub-project is supervised by the Chair of Landscape Planning of the Faculty of Architecture at the TU Dresden (Prof. Catrin Schmidt).
In SP F3 - Cumulative effects of renewable energy development on biodiversity spatially-explicit models are developed to predict and assess cumulative ecological effects of renewable energy development. This includes effects on biodiversity, e.g. on planning-relevant species (groups), and on ecosystem properties, e.g. structural and functional connectivity. To this end, spatio-temporal properties and inter- and intra-annual ecosystem dynamics will be considered and captured using remote sensing, which can then serve as the basis for assessing and forecasting cumulative impacts. This innovative assessment approach is expected to significantly improve the design of new renewable energy facilities and allow ecological impacts in the best possible way - without standing in the way of the overall expansion targets for RE. Here, too, close cooperation with the other subprojects on the basis of the aforementioned Autarkic Energy Park plays an important role, so that concrete expansion concepts and scenarios can be taken into account. The Chair of Computational Landscape Ecology of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences at the TU Dresden (Prof. Matthias Mauder) is responsible for the technical supervision.
The SP F4 - Monitoring concept "Sustainability of H2 production" evaluates, with the help of metrics on simulation specifications, the sustainability of regional energy networks. Metrics are measures that determine values at inputs and outputs of the simulated energy network, for example minimum input quantities or output quantities. Such energy metrics thus allow questions to be asked about the efficiency of the RE used and answered by the simulation. Based on this, sustainability metrics allow to ask and answer questions about the sustainability of an energy grid and thus to make sustainable decisions for the realization of regional energy grids, especially how the use of RE can be increased in them. In this process, the impacts of the other sub-projects of the cluster are recorded and, at the same time, the energy and sustainability metrics are fed back to them. The self-sufficient energy park serves as a reference example. For simulation, acausal (undirected) simulation languages, such as context-aware Modelica, Dymola and context-aware Petri nets based on them, are used. These languages enable for the first time the modeling of regional energy networks with variable system structures, which is extremely important for the sustainable deployment of RE and goes beyond the state of the art in research. This SP is technically supervised by the Chair of Software Technology of the Faculty of Computer Science at TU Dresden (Prof. Uwe Aßmann).
The fifth SP F5 - Entrepreneurial Impact on Sustainability in the H2- Economy examines whether the impact on sustainable development, in particular on large-scale sustainability transformation, is addressed by the activities and entrepreneurial approaches, such as business models, of companies in the hydrogen economy. Furthermore, based on the empirical findings, this subproject will elaborate possible theory-based further developments from which companies in the hydrogen industry can derive recommendations for action. The Junior Professorship in Sustainability Assessment and Policy of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the TU Dresden is responsible for the technical supervision of this subproject (Prof. Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva).
This dissertation project SP F6 - Hydrogen4GreenIT (formerly BR1) creates the methodological basis for modular, hydrogen-powered, and container-based data centres (hydrogen for green IT). For the overall system of a small modular data centre, consisting of computer, hydrogen generator, and hydrogen tank, a simulation is created that plans a throughput-optimised, load-balanced computing operation in order to be able to compensate for the fluctuating availability of natural energy through energy storage in conjunction with suitable scheduling and configuration strategies. In particular, the question of how long computing jobs can be processed with specific configurations of the hardware and energy infrastructure, how the load must be distributed among the processors for this purpose, and how the overall throughput of the data centre can be increased is investigated. Here, methods of energy-conscious configuration, which have already been developed at the applicant's chair for classic software and hardware, are extended to energy storage and scheduling strategies. For this purpose, the already existing energy consumption contracts for software and hardware components must be extended to hydrogen generators and hydrogen tanks, which requires the modelling of continuous energy flows in the overall system. As a result of the dissertation, the world's first energy contract system for computer systems embedded in their energy environment will be created and evaluated (through comparative simulation).
Two forms of storage have become established for storing hydrogen (H2) in transport systems. In high-pressure storage systems, H2 is stored at approx. 700 bar in single-walled containers (storage system 1). In cryogenic storage, cryogenic and practically pressureless liquid hydrogen is stored in highly insulated double-walled containers (storage system 2). For both storage systems, the use of fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) composites with their direction-dependent properties can save mass and energy during production and use while providing the same or increased functionality compared to metallic tanks. Within the scope of the proposed project SP F7 (previously BR 2) - Comparative methodology for the development and validation of cryogenic and high-pressure hydrogen storage systems made of fibre-plastic composites in aerospace applications, the development process chains of both storage systems are to be described as models. The necessary methods, models, and data (MMD) will be demonstrated from the risk analysis to the constructive development to the validation, validated exemplarily within the framework of a preliminary development, and the development processes and example tanks worked out in this way will finally be evaluated and compared with regard to technical, economic, and ecological criteria.