www.ceotodaymagazine.com 36 36 existing sites will need to be screened for suitability and upgraded for specific hydrogen requirements. Existing storage sites are located in depleted hydrocarbon fields, in aquifers or in salt caverns. All underground storage sites have a total gas content to be split into a working gas volume and a cushion gas volume, where the former is the gas volume that will be injected and produced during the operations and the latter one is needed to maintain sufficient pressure in the storage and enable economic production rates from the storage site. All storage types mentioned above have advantages and disadvantages. Typically, caverns are smaller in total volume, but can deliver high rates, whereas depleted gas fields may enable very large gas volumes to be stored and provide existing infrastructure from previous production operations. One thing to be considered for hydrogen storage is that caverns filled with hydrogen will allow for pure hydrogen production, whereas depleted gas fields, where the cushion gas consists of natural gas will produce some mixture of natural gas and hydrogen – at least for several storage cycles. Pros and cons will need to be assessed for each individual project. At this moment, many research projects are ongoing and the technology evolves rapidly. Europe is in a good position to be at the forefront of this development due to a long history track of safe operations in the gas storage. UEST with its partners are involved in many of the technology development projects, the technical conferences and exhibitions on hydrogen storage topics around the globe. At UEST, we will continue to share our expertise with our clients as we are already doing it today. Can you discuss your plans for expanding UEST’s business both domestically and internationally, and how will you maintain the high standards of safety and performance that the consortium is known for? While we will keep supporting domestic operators with their UGS and hydrogen storage operations and challenges, the focus of our expansion is clearly the international market. CCS will become a key pillar on THE CEO INTERVIEW “Europe’s largest industrial nations which unsurprisingly emit large volumes of CO2 do not possess equally large storage capacities to store their emitted CO2 within their geographical boundaries. Hence, some significant investment into CO2 infrastructure (transportation and storage) will be required.” LEONHARD GANZER
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