S³dEL

© BMWE

S³dEL: Safety and security for the scale-up of decentralized electrolysis plants

Joint project coordination
TUD Dresden University of Technology - Chair of Process Control Systems and Process Systems Engineering Group - Process-To-Order Lab

Brief description

To ensure that the market ramp-up of hydrogen production can be realized quickly and efficiently, especially in decentralized electrolysis plants, no safety concerns must remain unresolved. This requires manufacturer-independent safety standards and experience in the safe operation of electrolysis plants at different scaling levels. The realization of technical plant safety, functional safety and cyber security are required as independently verifiable and yet strongly networked independent prerequisites in order to ensure the production of green hydrogen in the various applications. By investigating the technical conditions at an early stage, it is possible to properly define requirements before the individual technologies are rolled out on a large scale. For complex electrolysis plants, there is a need for the development of combined, coordinated and economically considered protection concepts consisting of preventive technical and organizational measures, as well as automated monitoring equipment. With the new legal requirements, hydrogen plants above a certain level of scaling can be classified as critical infrastructure plants in the future. In addition, the new laws on cyber security place higher demands. In particular, the interfaces between the various security facets must be systematically considered, but are uncharted territory for many manufacturers and operators.

The S3dEL project aims to create concrete technical implementation guidelines as well as manual recommendations and training concepts for scalable electrolysis plants. Based on the safety analyses carried out in the project, manufacturer-independent concepts for the efficient protection of scalable electrolysis plants against risks and hazards are being developed. The findings are supported by experimental investigations and implemented, evaluated and refined in a scalable, modular demonstrator plant on a laboratory scale. A central component is the exchange of knowledge and findings with electrolyser manufacturers, operators and authorities.

The safety analyses are carried out for electrolysis reference plants in three different scaling levels and the transfer of the assumptions and concepts from the individual levels to each other is checked. The knowledge gained in the project will make it possible to predict the safety of larger electrolysis plants and to design test and inspection strategies for maintaining safety over the life cycle and when adapting the electrolysis plants.

An important focus is the transfer of the findings for the current, existing norms and standards landscape for safety and security and their interplay in hydrogen plants. The applicability of the existing set of standards is to be analyzed and any gaps in the existing standardization identified.