储运破局：筑牢“北绿南送”氢能缓冲底座Breaking the Storage and Transport Bottleneck: Strengthening the Hydrogen Buffer Foundation for 'Green North to South' Delivery

According to Green Fuel International Business Network, given the inherent intermittency of wind and solar power, how can green hydrogen truly enter modern large-scale industry? Jilin, with its abundant wind and solar resources, is seeking answers in the storage and transport link. On September 3, Yuan Jianguang, a researcher in the hydrogen storage and transport department of the Jilin Provincial Hydrogen Energy Industry Comprehensive Research Institute, gave an exclusive interview to reporters from China Jilin Net and Jike News, explaining the local industrial practice and real-world challenges of hydrogen storage and transport.

At the site of the Da'an integrated wind-solar green hydrogen-to-synthetic ammonia project, a 48,000-cubic-meter domestic solid-state hydrogen storage facility has become the key hardware for addressing an industry pain point. Wind and photovoltaic output depends on the weather, so the green hydrogen produced fluctuates, while downstream synthetic ammonia chemical units have near-stringent requirements for the continuity and purity of hydrogen supply. On one side is new energy that depends on the weather, and on the other is a chemical production line that cannot stop - this supply-demand mismatch is a hurdle that the whole world must clear in developing green hydrogen.

This solid-state hydrogen storage equipment acts as a "buffer warehouse" and "voltage regulator" for the industrial system. When wind and solar power generation is in surplus, hydrogen is locked into the lattice of hydrogen storage alloys; when output falls back, hydrogen is released steadily, smoothing out large fluctuations in the hydrogen supply. Compared with high-pressure gaseous and liquid hydrogen storage, solid-state storage has higher volumetric density and lower operating pressure, with clear safety advantages, and the high-purity hydrogen it releases also meets chemical production standards.

This is the first time globally that solid-state hydrogen storage technology has been deployed in a million-tonne-level green ammonia industrial scenario, with the entire set of equipment achieving 100% domestic content. In Yuan Jianguang's view, the project's value goes far beyond a single piece of equipment: it has verified a feasible pathway for supplying green hydrogen directly to modern large-scale industry.

Jilin shoulders the national strategic mission of "green north to south" delivery. The west has inexhaustible wind and solar resources, while the Yangtze River Delta and other regions have a huge gap in industrial decarbonization. Separated by thousands of kilometers, how can green hydrogen from the north be delivered efficiently to markets that need it? Rather than pinning its hopes on a single all-purpose technology, the local government has set out to build a multi-dimensional hydrogen storage and transport system: high-pressure gaseous hydrogen handles short-distance distribution, liquid ammonia and liquid methanol carriers open up long-distance rail and sea routes, and solid-state hydrogen storage fills the gaps in special scenarios such as industrial parks and flexible urban hydrogen supply.

According to the institute, its skid-mounted solid-state hydrogen storage device works like a "mobile hydrogen power bank," completing point-to-point hydrogen supply without laying pipeline networks, significantly lowering the infrastructure threshold for end-use hydrogen and offering a new supply approach for distributed hydrogen use in industrial parks and cities.

For the industry to go global, standards must keep pace. Jilin is accelerating the establishment of a full-chain standards system covering production, storage, transport and use. The green ammonia produced in Da'an has obtained the world's first international certification for renewable fuel ammonia and has been exported to South Korea, marking the alignment of local industry rules with the international market.

Technical and engineering verification has already succeeded, but cost remains the biggest obstacle to the large-scale commercialization of solid-state hydrogen storage. Yuan Jianguang believes that the cost of hydrogen storage materials and the iteration of large-scale complete equipment sets are the two core challenges at present: ideal laboratory performance does not equal a feasible solution under industrial conditions, and industry development requires a comprehensive balance among performance, manufacturing, service life, and operation and maintenance costs. In the future, cost reduction must rely on material improvement and capacity expansion to further expand the application scenarios of solid-state hydrogen storage.

Industry observers believe that breakthroughs in the hydrogen industry have never come from any single "black technology" fighting alone; hydrogen storage materials, complete equipment sets, certification standards and distribution networks together form a complete industrial foundation, which is what makes "green north to south" delivery possible. The Da'an project turns hydrogen from a concept into an industrial reality that runs without interruption, and this exploration from Jilin provides a practical example that domestic green hydrogen industrialization can learn from and apply.