H2SIM/HySTORAGE
Description
There is increasing interest in the underground storage of hydrogen in order to store renewable energy in large capacities on a seasonal and sustainable basis. The first field tests have been initiated in recent years to investigate the technical feasibility. Since 2023, Uniper Energy Storage GmbH has been storing hydrogen in phases at the Bierwang site as part of the research project 'HySTORAGE' in order to test the suitability and integrity of pore storage systems for use as underground hydrogen storage facilities
At the Institute of Subsurface Energy Systems, the work is accompanied by numerical simulations to characterize the mixing behavior of the stored hydrogen with the original natural gas. In addition, the potential effects of microbiological reactions on the operation of the storage facility are simulated. A specially developed two-phase multi-component transport model implemented in the open source simulator DuMu is used for these activities. The simulation model, calibrated by comparison with field data, should enable better predictions for large-scale underground water storage scenarios.