Skip to main content
  • DE
  • EN
  • FR
Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI)
Suche
Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI)

Hauptnavigation

  • Labs & User ServicesOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Research at PSI
    • Research Divisions and Labs
    • Facilities and Instruments
    • Research Initiatives
    • PSI User Labs
    • Scientific Highlights
    • Scientific Events
    • Scientific Career
    • Useroffice
  • VisitorsOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Contact
    • How to find us
    • Public Events
    • Visitor Centre psi forum
    • Schülerlabor iLab
    • Center for Proton Therapy
  • IndustryOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Technology Transfer
    • Spin-off Companies
    • PARK innovAARE
  • Our ResearchOpen mainmenu item
    • Current topics from our research
    • Matter and Material
    • Human Health
    • Energy and Environment
    • Large Research Facilities
    • Brochures
    • Films
    • Media Corner
  • Career & Further EducationOpen mainmenu item
    • Job Opportunities
    • Personnel Policy
    • Working at PSI
    • Equal Opportunities, Diversity & Inclusion
    • Training and Further Education
    • Vocational Training
    • PSI Education Centre
    • Support Program "PSI Career Return Program"
    • PSI-FELLOW/COFUND
  • About PSIOpen mainmenu item
    • PSI in brief
    • Strategy
    • Guiding principles
    • Facts and figures
    • Organisational structure
    • Suppliers and customers
    • Customers E-Billing
    • IT and Computing
    • Safety at PSI (in German)

You are here:

  1. PSI Home
  2. Our Research
  3. Current topics from our research
  4. Structure of the ESI Platform

Secondary navigation

Our Research

  • Current topics from our research Expanded submenu item
    • Matter and Material
    • Human Health
    • Energy and Environment
    • ESI Platform
    • Large research facilities
    • Project SLS 2.0
    • Topic Overview
    • Chronological Overview
      • Archiv
  • 5232 – The magazine of the Paul Scherrer Institute
    • Contact
  • Brochures
  • Films
    • Virtual Tour
  • Media corner
    • Media Releases
    • Social Media Newsroom
11 May 2016

Structure of the ESI Platform

ESI Platform

The road to a sustainable energy future leads through the integration of new renewable energy sources, from the sun, the wind, or biomass. Using the Energy System Integration or ESI Platform, research and industry can test promising approaches in all their complex connections and interrelations.

Schematic representation of the ESI Platform. (Graphic: Paul Scherrer Institute)
Schematic representation of the ESI Platform. (Graphic: Paul Scherrer Institute)

The modular structure of the ESI Platform makes it easily adaptable to the requirements of research. The basic infrastructure ensures provision of electricity and gases as needed for a variety of energy conversion processes. This includes above all hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. In addition, other gases such as carbon monoxide and methane can be made available on demand.

Versatile hydrogen

A key element is hydrogen, which is produced by a electrolyser. In the electrolyser, current is used to break water into hydrogen and oxygen. Both gases are stored in pressure tanks. In the ESI Platform, the hydrogen is either processed with carbon dioxide to make synthetic natural gas (methane) or directly converted, together with oxygen or air, back to electric current. The ESI Platform accommodates all of the plant components needed for this, including a facility for drying and purifying the hydrogen and oxygen from the electrolyser.

Methanation at the pilot scale

Carbon monoxide too – as generated, for example, through the gasification of wood – can be converted into methane with the help of hydrogen. Two facilities are available for experimenting with the conversion of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide to methane (methanation). One mobile, remotely controllable facility enables methane synthesis at a small scale. It can also be transported, if necessary, to an industrial site such as a biogas facility. With a power of 10 kilowatts, it can produce one cubic metre of methane per hour. The ESI Platform also offers a 160-kilowatt methanation facility with which highly scalable performance, to industrial standards, can be achieved.

Putting fuel cells to the test

In addition, hydrogen and oxygen produced by the ESI Platform electrolyser are used to test precommercial fuel cell systems co-developed by the PSI. The goal is to show, for example, how efficient the direct back-conversion to electricity can be for fuel cells operated with pure oxygen. This applies also to testing how such systems can be deployed dynamically in order to balance fluctuations in the power grid.

Extendable, mobile container stations

The ESI Platform is extendable and offers space for different test arrangements. These are housed in containers, which can be either installed in place or mobile, as needed – like the mobile methanation facility. With mobile containers, processes can be tested both at the ESI Platform and at facilities elsewhere. That lends itself particularly well to processes that work with liquid biomass – for example derived from agricultural waste or sludge. Here it is often simpler to take the process to the biomass than the other way around.

Additional information
Overview: ESI Platform – new pathways to the energy system of the future
Partners of the ESI Platform
Contact
Martina Gröschl, Communications Department
Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232 Villigen PSI
Telephone: +41 56 310 52 13, e-mail: martina.groeschl@psi.ch

Sidebar

5232 Ausgabe 3 2020

5232 — Das Magazin des Paul Scherrer Instituts

03/2020
in German
View in issuu.com
Download

Visitor Centre psi forum

Experience research live


The iLab School Laboratory

Experience Science - Explore Research

top

Footer

Paul Scherrer Institut

Forschungsstrasse 111
5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland
How to find us

Imprint
Terms and Conditions

Login

Telephone: +41 56 310 21 11
Telefax: +41 56 310 21 99
Contact form

Visitor Centre psi forum
School Lab iLab (in German)
Center for Proton Therapy

Follow us: Twitter (in English) LinkedIn Youtube Issuu RSS

Quicklinks

  • Phone Book/People Search
  • Digital User Office
  • Technology transfer
  • PSI Publications
  • Computing
  • Safety (in German)
  • Job Opportunities
  • Vocational Training (in German)
  • Suppliers
  • Customers E-Billing
  • PSI Guest House
  • PSI Gastronomie (in German)

For the media

  • Media Contact
  • Media Releases
  • Social Media Newsroom
  • Facts and Figures
  • PSI in brief
  • Films
  • DE
  • EN
  • FR