When people think of hydrogen (H2) as an energy source, they typically think of fuel cells, the exciting technology that might someday soon power electric vehicles and other elements of our daily lives. But fuel cells aren’t the only way that H2 is useful for electrification. It is also used as a fuel source for electricity generation—most often in blends with natural gas, but also in its pure form.
The potential for H2 as an energy source is very exciting, and it offers tremendous growth potential to any organization adopting it. However, as Drew Mackley and Eric Cytrynowicz share in their recent article in H2 Tech, that adoption can be a complex undertaking.
“Ultimately, H2 provides many opportunities for business growth for those companies willing to innovate. However, H2 production and distribution requires many critical elements to work in sync to promote operational excellence across the value chain. Generation, transportation, distribution, monitoring, and more are all critical to safe, efficient, profitable hydrogen operations—and if one of those elements fails, it is a problem for all the other links in the chain.”
The answer? Automation systems that can support operations from production all the way to transportation of H2—automation systems that are part of a seamlessly integrated software stack.
Wrangling reliability
H2 facilities run production assets that are similar to other power generation sites. Plants contain lots of rotating equipment that is subject to mechanical failure as wear and tear builds up over time. To keep their personnel safe and their operations running efficiently, organizations must manage wear and tear and stay ahead of potential problems.
“Teams wanting to achieve operational excellence must also be focused on reliability. If any of the plant’s critical or essential assets fail unexpectedly, the process can be subject to downtime, which not only impacts safety and efficiency locally, but also can potentially cause problems with transportation and distribution further along the value chain.”
Not just any reliability software is up to the task of managing the complex array of equipment in H2 generation. Today’s teams are using powerful tools with embedded AI, like Emerson’s AMS Optics, to provide early warning of potential failure states so they can intervene before a fault becomes an outage.
Moreover, the AI tools powered by Aspen Mtell® in AMS Optics not only alert users to potential faults but also guide them through troubleshooting and fixing those problems, making issue resolution faster and easier regardless of the experience of the personnel on site.
Critical computing
To drive the most value from H2 operations organizations also need ways to carefully track product as it is transported across the company’s network. Today’s most successful companies rely on Emerson’s remote terminal units (RTUs) for this task.
“Remote terminal units are a critical element for keeping track of the molecules flowing through a pipeline. For companies transporting H2 and/or natural gas blends, implementing modern RTUs is of particular importance. RTUs can poll information from Coriolis, positive displacement, and other meters to track the volumetric and energy values of H2 as it passes from stage to stage across the value chain. However, when dealing with H2 and H2 blends, the calculations are often more complex, so companies will want to implement modern RTUs that not only provide the most current algorithms for accurate calculation but also can be easily updated as needs and regulations change.”
Leveraging the industry’s best computing technology not only helps teams ensure accuracy of delivery and reporting but also improves safety through better leak detection. The more accurate and timely the collection of data, the more likely teams will be able to stay on top of critical issues.
Bringing it together—boundlessly
Having the right technologies in place is a critical enabler of success. However, if those technologies are all from different solution providers and must be connected via a complex web of custom integration, their value begins to diminish quickly.
“Implementing many different sensors, devices, and software packages from a wide array of solution providers, all using their own proprietary communication methods, quickly builds silos of data. Teams wanting to bring everything together for viewing and analysis will need to connect many different systems through a complex and fragile web of engineered interfaces. In most cases, building those interfaces is possible, but it is extremely time consuming, and it requires deep expertise. Moreover, even when disparate systems are connected, someone must have the time and expertise to maintain those connections over the lifecycle of all the solutions.”
A better solution is to follow Emerson’s Boundless Automationsm vision for seamless software integration from the field through the edge and into the cloud. Emerson technologies are designed to integrate out of the box to eliminate silos and make it easy to make the most of an organization’s data. Teams can connect and configure systems faster, and ensure they continue to work as expected, end-to-end, without extra maintenance overhead.
The path to H2 generation still contains some complexity, but much of that complexity can be mitigated by fit-for-purpose automation technologies. Those companies doing so are positioning themselves to reap the rewards that come with innovation. Bold moves typically come with big rewards.
