Abstract
The need to store large quantities of hydrogen in large diameter steel vessels under high pressures results in shell thicknesses that are too large to produce by most steel mills and not practical to fabricate. Accordingly, a research program was undertaken by Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop a new concept of combining steel with concrete to construct such vessels economically and practically. The concept is to fabricate vessels where the steel shell thickness is approximately one half that required to resist the hoop forces due to internal pressure. As such, the steel shell is designed to carry the full amount of the longitudinal forces in the vessel but only one half of the hoop loads due to internal pressure. The other half of the hoop loads is carried by a prestressed and reinforced concrete shell. In large diameter vessels, the cost of the shell can further be reduced by using layered steel shell construction rather than solid-wall construction. Such shell construction has also the added advantage of easily venting the hydrogen that permeates through the steel shell directly to the atmosphere through vent holes. This mechanism prevents the hydrogen from damaging the steel shell. The theoretical formulation of the steel concrete shell design is presented in this paper. In addition, details of a full-scale mock up vessel designed, fabricated, and tested to prove the proposed methodology are given.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 021202 |
Journal | Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology, Transactions of the ASME |
Volume | 142 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 1 2020 |
Funding
This manuscript has been co-authored by UT-Battelle LLC, under Contract No. DE-AC0500OR22725, with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan.2 The research was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), managed and operated by UT-Battelle, LLC. Programmatic direction was provided by the Fuel Cell Technologies Office. Mr. Nico Bouwkamp of the CaFCP & Frontier Energy was very helpful in showing the authors the existing infrastructure and various kinds of fueling stations in the Los Angeles, California, area. The cost analysis of various configuration options was done by Mr. Mike Kelly of Irvine, California. The initial analysis of the concrete shell including Finite Element analysis was performed by Dr. Fariborz Vossoughi at the Ben Gerwick Corporation in Oakland, California. Final details of reinforcement and prestressing of the concrete were calculated by Mr. Basil Kattula of Kent, Washington. A comprehensive Finite Element Analysis was also conducted by Jian Chen at ORNL. The layered steel vessel was fabricated by Kobelco in Kobe, Japan, with Mr. Susumu Terada contributing substantially to the various phases of fabrication. Strain gage instrumentation and data acquisition during concrete placement, hydrotesting, and hydrogen cycling was conducted by Dr. Fei Ren of Temple University in Baltimore, Maryland. The prestressed and reinforced concrete shell was fabricated by the Thompson Pipe Group in Grand Prairie, Texas, with Mr. Sam Arnaout’s technical assistance. Final hydrotesting and hydrogen cycling was conducted at the Harris Thermal Transfer Products in Newberg, Oregon, under the direction of Mr. Jim Nylander.