According to data from the German Environment Agency, private households currently are responsible for about a quarter of Germany's energy consumption in total. A good half of this energy is obtained from natural gas and crude oil. Considering the intensifying climate change, this statistic is a sobering one. “Hydrogen obtained from renewable energies has so much more potential as an energy carrier for the future,” says Prof. Holger Seidlitz, lightweight construction specialist at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg and Head of “Polymer Materials and Composite PYCO” research at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP at the Wildau location, highlighting the situation.
Together with his team and a medium-sized enterprise, he is taking a two-pronged approach to the future of hydrogen: first, he is focusing on sourcing the energy needed for hydrogen production. The cooperation partners are currently developing a small and efficient wind power plant to do this. Second, the team is busy looking at how to store this valuable gas. To this end, they are producing new types of hydrogen tanks made of fiber-reinforced composites.
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06 May 2021
