Hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles are intended to make heavy-duty transport more sustainable. To achieve this goal, the components required for this purpose, including new tank systems for liquid hydrogen, must be produced cost-effectively in high volumes. Due to the high requirements on cleanliness in the production process and the low degree of use, these hydrogen tanks are currently only produced in very small numbers.
As part of the CleanProduction4HydrogenStorage (CleanPro4HS) project, Fraunhofer IPA identified and evaluated manufacturing technologies for the mass production of hydrogen tanks. Due to the sensitivity to pollution of the current fuel cells, measures to ensure technical cleanliness in the production processes are of great importance.
For this, critical production processes were identified based on the cleanliness specifications and alternative production technologies were investigated. To ensure technical cleanliness in the product development process, a set of methods was developed that provides the basis for cleanliness-oriented series production. Since the contamination potential of the used manufacturing technologies had not been scientifically researched, individual manufacturing technologies were investigated in realistic tests as part of the project to determine their contamination potential. Among other things, the contamination caused by welding was analyzed and different processes were compared. The evaluation of the manufacturing technologies in the project provides the basis for an efficient design of series production processes.
