Go-ahead: "Standardisation Roadmap for Hydrogen Technologies" project

Prof. Dr. Arnhold: I'd be happy to. The joint project "Standardisation Roadmap for Hydrogen Technologies" is a collaborative project undertaken by a number of organisations – including the German Institute for Standardization (DIN), the German Association for Gas and Water (DVGW), the German Association for the Machinery and Equipment Manufacturing Industry (VDMA), the Association of German Engineers (VDI), the German Commission for Electrotechnical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VDE/DKE) and the German Association for the Standardisation and Further Development of the Railway System (NWB).

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action of Germany (BMWK) and has multiple aims, including coordinating and integrating national regulations and the interest groups involved, integrating with European and international initiatives for hydrogen standardisation, adopting an agreed, national process for Germany and transferring the drafted regulations to European and international level, covering the entire value chain of hydrogen technologies and launching targeted standardisation projects.

Prof. Dr. Arnhold: As a leading international supplier of explosion protection solutions, we are of course involved in drafting this national roadmap and implementing these ambitious objectives. In particular, in the working group for explosion protection we will contribute our expertise and decades of experience in using highly flammable hydrogen gas. Over 90% of our products have IIC approval and are therefore suitable for use in hydrogen systems. This would also cover secondary explosion protection for many new technologies which require hydrogen as an energy source, storage medium and raw material for the post-fossil-fuel era.

The working group for explosion protection expects that there will be much more work to do when it comes to primary explosion protection. There is still a lack of international regulations governing the tightness of systems, for example. In Germany, these have been successfully used for a number of years in TRGS 722 in the form of the categories "technically tight" and "permanently technically tight". Experts have a great deal of work ahead of them in terms of tertiary or design-related explosion protection too.