Advancement of Experimental and Modeling Approaches for Development of Hydrogen Energy Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Hydrogen is a promising clean energy carrier for the future environmentally friendly economy, as hydrogen can be produced by renewable energy sources and used as a fuel by releasing energy when reacting with oxygen without emitting harmful pollutants. However, there are technical and economic issues that must be addressed to make hydrogen energy systems viable for broad applications. Hydrogen is usually extracted from other compounds, such as water and natural gas. Then, it needs to be stored and transported in a compact form with sufficient energy density. Hydrogen must be transferred between different storage media at sufficiently fast rates, and finally, it needs to react with oxygen in a controllable way to safely release useful energy. These processes require the utilization of various devices, such as electrolyzers, storage tanks, pumps, metering systems, fuel cells, and others. Their efficiencies must be improved for hydrogen to compete with the currently available fossil fuels.

In addition, for use as a transportation fuel, hydrogen needs to be stored in a liquid form to ensure adequate energy density and to enable long-range hydrogen-fuelled vehicles for various domains, including trucks and airplanes. Liquid hydrogen exists only at very low temperatures, below 30 K, requiring efficient liquefiers, cryogenic vessels, transfer lines, pumps, and other components. 

While hydrogen is already used as a fuel for niche applications, including space rockets and warehouse forklifts, its broader utilization depends on the development of efficient hydrogen-capable hardware. In this Special Issue, researchers working on hydrogen energy systems will present contemporary and novel modelling approaches and experimental techniques that will help advance the elements of hydrogen energy systems. The scope of such methods and test systems is very broad. Some examples include novel and improved liquefaction cycles and associated hardware, the storage of liquid hydrogen and highly compressed gaseous hydrogen, fuel cells, hydrogen combustors, correlations for heat transfer and pressure drop in two-phase hydrogen flow, cryogenic pumps and metering devices, instabilities in hydrogen systems, hydrogen safety, materials for hydrogen, ortho-parahydrogen conversion, technoeconomic analysis, and other topics relevant to hydrogen energy systems.

Prof. Dr. Konstantin Matveev
Guest Editor

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• hydrogen fuel
• electrolyzers
• fuel cells
• hydrogen liquefiers
• computational fluid dynamics
• cryogenics
• two-phase flow
• system instabilities
• techno-economic analysis