CHROMATOGRAPHY
Chromacity’s new solution is based on a single light source
Optical solution for hydrogen testing
A new solution combining high brightness technology offers advances in testing hydrogen for contaminants
C
hromacity has developed a next-generation optical chromatography solution for the detection
of contaminants in renewable hydrogen. While renewable hydrogen is
widely acknowledged to play a growing role in decarbonising the economy, there are still challenges around controlling its purity. With supply from diverse sources including green, blue and regasifi ed hydrogen from storage media, users need confi dence that the gas they use is of suff icient quality that it will not damage key components such as fuel cells or infrastructure. Working in partnership with the
Herriot Watt University and Frauhofer UK, the new, yet to be named, solution combines high brightness, coherent Optical Parametric Oscillator (OPO) laser technology with advanced FTIR spectroscopy techniques. This has been shown to off er advantages over current
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technologies. The ISO 14687:2019 standard which defi nes thresholds for a wide range of contaminants in hydrogen for fuel cells, is being used to benchmark this development. Julian Hayes, CEO of Chromacity
says: “Existing optical solutions for determining the purity of renewable hydrogen either compromise on spectral resolution and detection sensitivity or are overly complex making them expensive, thereby limiting deployment. Likewise, the implementation of sensitive gas chromatography techniques is limited because the instrumentation is costly and bulky.”
REMOVING COMPLEXITY He adds: “Based on a single light source, our solution removes the complexities of multi-source optical techniques and so lowers the cost of ownership. The broad, tuneable bandwidth of the OPO laser allows many contaminants to be detected,
including broad or complex chemical signatures. Our instrument is designed to be used in-line and has been shown to monitor the fi ve key contaminants in the renewable hydrogen production process (as detailed in ISO 14687) in real time.” Mr Hayes concludes: “Having been
successfully tested in the lab on representative gas samples, the next stage of developing the system is to enable users to use live real-time data within their production process.”
*This development received investment from Scottish Government Emerging Energy Technologies Fund (EETF) – see
https://www.gov.scot/publications/ emerging-energy-technologies- fund-hydrogen-innovation-scheme- successful-projects/
For further information visit:
www.chromacitylasers.com
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