As of the publication of the Vision Report ¹ by the High Level Group established in 2003, JRC has been actively involved in hydrogen and fuel-cell related activities. Just over ten years ago, in July 2005, the hydrogen storage and fuel cell test facilities in Petten have been officially opened. In line with the JRC mission statement, the research performed in these state-of-the-art facilities targets pre-normative research in support to European and international standardization and regulatory activities. In parallel, and complementing the experimental work, JRC contributes to the SETIS deliverables Technology Maps, Capacities Maps and ETRI Database. Also, JRC has facilitated the Secretariat of the European Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform, from where the public-private partnership European Joint Undertaking on Fuel Cells and Hydrogen (FCH-JU) was established to implement the related Joint Technology Initiative in collaboration between European industrial and research partners.

As an industry-led PPP according to Article 187 TFEU, FCH-JU has a ring-fenced budget to implement consecutive annual work plans to address research and innovation priorities that have been agreed between the FCH-JU members: the industry grouping, the research grouping and the Commission. Being part of the Commission, JRC has oriented its work on fuel cells and hydrogen to comply with and complement the R&I topics prioritized by the European industry. In line with the JRC mission, JRC activities target public goods such as safety, security and sustainability. In doing so, particular emphasis is placed on establishing EU-wide consented science-based approaches and methodologies for evaluating and quantifying the performance of FCH technologies under service-representative conditions in terms of safety, (resource) efficiency, reliability, durability, emissions, etc. The output of the JRC work feeds into European and international standardization. In both ISO TC 197 on Hydrogen Technologies and IEC TC 105 on Fuel Cell Technologies JRC has liaison-A status on behalf of the Commission which allows it to contribute to defining the scope and schedule of international standardization activities to best meet European priorities and interests.

Successful examples of JRC pre-normative and pre-regulatory work cover

• the input to European and international standards and regulations (table 1),
• the organization and evaluation of international inter-laboratory tests to identify and quantify test parameters and external factors that affect the accuracy, repeatability and reproducibility of the measurement result (e.g. hydrogen solid state storage (fig. 1 from ²) and polarization curves for fuel cell stacks; (fig. 2 PEMFC with ANL + reference ³),
• multi-criteria performance assessment of hydrogen detectors (fig. 3 from ⁴) to enable selection of which type of sensor best fits a given application,
• data generation of high-pressure fast filling of hydrogen tanks for subsequent use for modelling purposes (fig. 4 from ⁵),
• validation of CFD-models for fast filling of tanks (fig. 5 from ⁶) to enhance confidence in numerical models applied for safety investigations,
• co-organisation on a 2-yearly basis of the leading International Conference on Hydrogen Safety (fig. 6 - photo ICHS-2013).

Recently, JRC has also organized an international workshop in the Science-for-Standards series on Power-to-Hydrogen (https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/event/workshop/workshop-putting-science-standards-power-hydrogen-and-hcng/presentations-keynotes-conclusions) which has meanwhile led to the setting up of a dedicated CEN-CENELEC Working Group under the Sector Forum Energy Management on the topic. Also a number of international workshops under the frame of the JRC Enlargement and Integration Action have been organized; some of these figuring as milestone in the Fuel Cell and Safety, Codes and Standards sub-programmes of the US-DoE Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Programme.

Table 1: JRC has contributed to the formulation of the following standards and regulations

 

Standards	IEC TC 105	IEC TS 62282-7-1:2010 Single cell test methods for PEFC IEC TS 62282-1:2013 Fuel cell technologies Part 1:Terminology IEC TS 62282-7-2:2014 Test method – single cell and stack performance test for SOFC IEC-62282-4-101:2014 Safety of electrically powered industrial trucks ,
	IEC TC 105 On-going	IEC-TS 62282-7-1:2016 Single cell test methods for PEFC
		IEC-62282-4-102:2017 Performance test methods for electrically powered industrial trucks
		NWIP on electrolysis standardisation
	ISO TC 197	ISO 14687-2:2012 Hydrogen fuel -- Product specification -- Part 2: Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell applications for road vehicles
		ISO 26142 Hydrogen detection apparatus — Stationary applications
		Still on-going: ISO 19880-1  Gaseous hydrogen — Fuelling stations
	CENELEC	Workshop Agreement 50611  Flow batteries - Guidance on the specification, installation and operation
Regulations	Commission Regulation	EU No 406/2010, implementing Regulation (EC) No 79/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council on type-approval of hydrogen-powered motor vehicles
	UNECE WP.29 GTR 13	Global technical regulation on hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles

 

As for other activity areas, JRC research on hydrogen and fuel cells is performed in close collaboration with European and international partners. Within the EU, JRC partners with the members of the FCH-JU industry and research grouping and has established a number of collaboration agreements with leading national research centres. At the international level, JRC is involved in the activities of the EU-US Energy Council, where hydrogen and fuel cells are identified as priority transatlantic collaboration topic. In this context, JRC teams up with the US Department of Energy by acting as co-chair to the Regulations, Codes and Standards Working Group of the International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in the Economy (IPHE) and by collaborating in specific topics with a number of DoE national labs, JRC also represents the Commission in the Executive Committee of the Hydrogen Implementing Agreement of the International energy Agency (HIA-IEA) and participates to some of the HIA tasks.

 

Next to continuing the pre-normative research, future JRC work on hydrogen and fuel cells will increasingly look into identifying and facilitating the necessary actions for enabling the deployment of FCH technologies in the EU. From this point of view, based on its impartiality and expertise, JRC will step up its support to FCH-JU in technology monitoring and assessment and in tailoring and coordinating the FCH-JU Regulations, Codes and Standards Coordination Strategy.

 

---

¹ Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cells – A vision of our future, Final report of the High Level Group, EC,EUR20719EN, 2003

² Moretto et al., A Round Robin Test exercise on hydrogen absorption/desorption properties of a magnesium hydride based material, international journal of hydrogen energy 38 (2013) 6704-6717

³ Bloom et al., A comparison of Fuel Cell Testing protocols - A case study: Protocols used by the U.S. Department of Energy, European Union, International Electrotechnical Commission/Fuel Cell Testing and Standardization Network, and Fuel Cell Technical Team, Journal of Power Sources 243 (2013) 451-457

⁴ Boon-Brett et al., Reliability of commercially available hydrogen sensors for detection of hydrogen at critical concentrations: Part II – selected sensor test results, International journal of hydrogen energy 34(2009), 562-571

⁵ Acosta et al., JRC reference data from experiments of on-board hydrogen tanks fast filling, International Journal of hydrogen energy 39(2014)20531-20537

⁶ Galassi et al Assessment of CFD models for hydrogen fast filling simulations, International journal of hydrogen energy 39(2014)6252-6260