Enagás’ Director of Technical Services and Technology, Pedro Rubio, defended the importance of innovation to accelerate the advance of renewable hydrogen. “Combining the power of R&D with the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT), we can open up unprecedented possibilities and accelerate the advancement of hydrogen technologies,” he remarked during his participation in the second day of the 2024 IOT Solutions Word Congress held from 21 to 23 May at the Fira de Barcelona.
“We are managing innovation projects to close the existing technological gap and develop the hydrogen network,” he said during his speech “Challenges Towards Hydrogen Network”. In addition to the R&D&I projects being developed by Enagás, last April the company launched the Hydrogen Technology Observatory, a meeting point for companies, administrations, universities and research centres to share technological advances in the development of green hydrogen and thus accelerate its deployment.
Pedro Rubio stated that one of Enagás’ main cutting-edge projects is Hyloop+, at its Metrology and Innovation Centre in Zaragoza, which will be built in 2025 and aims to establish a chain of traceability in the measurement of green hydrogen. “This would allow us to position ourselves at the highest international level,” he stressed.
The Director of Technical Services and Technology also explained that Enagás has real-time monitoring of its network of 12,000 kilometres of gas pipelines, and detailed the improvements that will be implemented in the system. This continuous monitoring would be augmented in future hydrogen networks with projects such as TheNextPangea for early detection of hydrogen embrittlement or Hystorenew, which allows improved geological monitoring by processing satellite images.
He also specified that Enagás is beginning to apply digital technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) to future hydrogen infrastructure projects in order to develop digital twins, which will allow physical assets to be simulated and processes to be improved at a lower cost and with less impact.
