Advancing hydrogen storage: Development and verification of a high-pressure permeation test setup for polymeric barrier materials

Polymers are essential materials for high-pressure hydrogen systems, especially in type IV and V hydrogen storage tanks. Extreme operating conditions, with pressures up to 875 bar and temperatures from −40 °C to 85 °C pose serious challenges for these polymeric materials. In particular, the permeation of hydrogen through such materials, a key property for these applications, is strongly influenced by these environmental conditions. A new permeation test setup for pressures up to 1000 bar and a temperature range of 0–85 °C was developed to characterize the hydrogen permeation properties of polymer materials and to evaluate their suitability for storage applications. The reproducibility of the permeation coefficients obtained with the permeation test setup was verified within this work, by repeated tests with pressures of up to 800 bar on high-density polyethylene. In addition, calculations of statistical deviation and error propagation were performed to further validate the performance of the test setup.