February 14, 2025
Habari! Sannu! Bonjour! Mulishani! Sharing our knowledge with the international community is an important element of our mission and this week we were able to show how we are supporting the decarbonisation of the energy sector.
Our CEO Eric May welcomed the visitors from 18 African nations with a FEnEx CRC briefing.
FEnEx CRC is an excellent example of how Australia has managed to breakdown barriers between government, academia, research and training institutions providing a neutral, collegiate platform for in-depth engagement, technology advancement and energy policy.
The visitors heard from one senior academic, Saif Al Ghafri, and three up and coming postdoctoral fellows during their laboratory tours; Fuyu Jiao, Kwanghee Jeong and Liam Tenardi.
Fuyu spoke of a gas study that explores boil-off in liquefied CO₂, identifying three stages: pressurisation, transient, and steady-state. It highlights how thermal stratification, impurities, and solid CO₂ formation influence boil-off rates and pressurisation. Managing and mitigating boil off gas, ensures shipping safety, reduced losses of valuable cargo, reduced evaporation of fugitive emissions, all key considerations when handling extremely cold liquids.
Liam went on to describe the importance of understanding blockages in pipelines and how impurities need to be managed and mitigated. The better the management of potential blockages, the less likely there will be costly shut-downs, leaks and repairs. A sensor has been developed at UWA and tested on a pilot scale expansion loop to monitor the accumulation of impurities in real-time, providing an early warning system.
Finally, Kwanghee showed the visitors the liquid hydrogen facility that studies ortho-to-parahydrogen conversion which is critical to achieving an efficient hydrogen cooling process, and Saif presented the hydrogen liquefier and boil-off test rig, allowing for a better understanding and modelling of safety hazards during liquid hydrogen storage and transportation. The visitors left with a Kwaheri…………hadi wakati mwingine (goodbye, until next time).