Our Research
The work of the Hydrogen Energy Systems FSP is done via our research projects, and our work falls into two main types of activity: those on a technology development pathway, and those focussed more on creating and developing the required capabilities for the emerging hydrogen industry.
Our technology projects are diverse, from novel one-step processes for producing hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol, through to new concepts for lowering the cost of compression and technologies for removing low concentrations of hydrogen from natural gas pipelines.
Our capability projects allow us to develop the science and the tools needed to support the new industry. For example, we do not know enough about atmospheric chemistry to have confidence in our abilities to predict the impacts of using more hydrogen, ammonia, and other chemicals across our towns and cities. We do not have the data needed to confidently model the range of technological pathways from a technoeconomic perspective, and we need new methods to be able to bring our world-class geology to the challenge of storing vast quantities of hydrogen underground.
And, importantly, we need to make sure that we bring the people along with us!
How we select our projects
We choose projects based on the following criteria:
- Relevance: work to address real industry needs (even if those needs appear in the future)
- New science: the topics related to the largest knowledge gaps
- Impact: allows step changes e.g. decreasing the number of process steps, new use cases, or significant system performance improvements
- Bonus: broader than hydrogen – applicable in other sectors or helping to establish an Australia hydrogen technology supplier industry.
