How Control Valves Ensure Safety and Efficiency in Clean Hydrogen Production

Clean hydrogen production is seen as an essential part of the global transition to more sustainable energy sources and helping to reduce carbon emissions for end-use applications such as industrial feedstock and transportation fuel. But producing and handling hydrogen safely and efficiently requires precise control of flow and pressure, which is where control valves play a key role.

If you want to learn more about the role control valves play in hydrogen electrolysis, storage and transportation, as well as the key considerations for specifying hydrogen control valves, this article is for you.

Control Valves in Hydrogen Electrolysis

Green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis—a process that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen—using electricity from renewable energy sources like wind or solar power. This contrasts with grey hydrogen and blue hydrogen, which uses steam reforming or gasification of fossil fuels in its production.

Control valves control the supply of water to the electrolyzer, ensuring there’s a consistent reaction for maximum hydrogen output. They also regulate the removal of oxygen and hydrogen gases, preventing pressure imbalances that could reduce efficiency or damage equipment.

Control Valves in Hydrogen Storage and Transportation

Hydrogen has to be stored at high pressures. It also has small, highly mobile molecules that can leak easily and is extremely flammable. So it’s vital that every component in the system that transports and stores hydrogen is reliably robust as well as precise in its operation over time to prevent leaks, pressure surges and system failures.

Control valves play a key role in preventing these issues by adjusting flow rates and stabilizing pressure to ensure safe hydrogen handling. During transportation—whether through pipelines, tankers, or storage tanks—control valves help prevent over-pressurization which would lead to dangerous leaks. In storage, control valves regulate hydrogen release to maintain the integrity of the system and prevent sudden pressure drops that could impact downstream service.

Considerations for Hydrogen-Ready Control Valves

Hydrogen production, transportation and storage aren’t new applications for industrial automation. But the level of investment, scale and end-use application innovation is new and challenging.

Fortunately, they’re challenges we’re used to working with at Trimteck, thanks to our experience with another demanding use case—aerospace testing applications. So these are the considerations you’ll want to include when specifying your hydrogen control valve:

• Material Durability: Hydrogen embrittlement is one of the biggest issues facing control valves. After prolonged exposure to hydrogen, even typically resilient materials can become brittle and damaged, compromising safety and efficiency. Stainless steel or nickel-based alloys are the optimal materials for valve bodies and trim in hydrogen applications.
  
  
• Performance Under High Pressures: Hydrogen compression and storage requires pressures between 350-700 bar, which demand incredible resilience from the process control system components, including control valves.
  
  
• Cryogenic Service: Some hydrogen applications need control valves to not only withstand but perform optimally in extremely low temperatures. At Trimteck, we have the OpGL Cryo which we’ve designed to perform reliably in temperatures lower than -425F (-254C) while preserving precise control, fast stroking speeds and class IV or VI repeatable shutoff.
  
  
• High Safety Standards: As well as ensuring that the manufacturer you work with is ISO 9001-certified, they should also provide specialist cleaning for their products to make them safe for use in hydrogen and oxygen systems. This is to avoid even a single carbon molecule remaining in the equipment which could flare off and result in an explosion. Manufacturers who offer this will have their own clean room where they bring control valves, break them down and clean them rigorously, They’ll then take swabs and examine them under a microscope to make sure the carbon ratio is fewer than 1:10000.
  
  
• Fugitive Emissions: While human safety will always be the highest priority in hydrogen control valve specification, another key consideration is fugitive emissions resulting in greenhouse gases (GHGs). In control valves, most of the fugitive emissions are attributable to the stem packing. We’ve resolved this issue with innovative packing configurations and our OpGL Guardmaster Metal Bellows Seal which operates up to 6 million cycles in temperatures as low as -380F and pressures up to 1300PSI.

An Experienced Partner for Hydrogen Applications

We precision-engineer and manufacture custom specialty control valves for various hydrogen applications, including proton exchange membrane (PEM) and alkaline electrolyzers, hydrogen compression and storage and ammonia-to-hydrogen conversion.

If you’d like to learn more about our experience with and commitment to industrial automation for the hydrogen industry, visit our dedicated hydrogen industry page for more detail and technical brochures.