A Milestone Moment! China's First Million-Cubic-Meter-Level Salt Cavern Hydrogen Storage Project Officially Commenced Operation in Pingdingshan

On April 25, China's first million-cubic-metre-level salt cavern hydrogen storage demonstration project was officially put into operation in Pingdingshan City, Henan Province. The project was jointly implemented by the Wuhan Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and China Pingmei Shenma Group. It addressed the critical bottleneck of large-scale, low-cost hydrogen energy storage, marking the official entry of China's hydrogen "production–storage–transportation–utilisation" entire industry chain into a new stage of industrialisation.

The project, leveraging the high-quality salt field resources in the Pingdingshan area, was led by the team of Academician Yang Chunhe from the Wuhan Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and was constructed through the full process in collaboration with PetroChina, Sinopec, and other entities. The drilling depth reached 1418 metres, and a salt cavern with a water-dissolved volume exceeding 30,000 m³ was completed, with a designed hydrogen storage capacity of 1.5 million standard cubic metres. The gas injection pressure was 15 MPa at a rate of 2,000 standard cubic metres per hour, with all indicators meeting pilot-scale standards.

As the world's first hydrogen storage facility built using layered salt rock, the project overcame multiple world-class technical challenges: elucidating the multi-scale migration patterns of hydrogen in ultra-low-permeability rock salt and developing precise site and layer selection techniques; conducting R&D on hydrogen embrittlement-resistant casings and highly sealed wellhead devices, achieving 100% localisation of core equipment; and pioneering an integrated "surface–wellbore–cavern" safety monitoring system to ensure long-term stable operation.

The commissioning of this project verified the long-term sealing performance and engineering feasibility of layered salt rock hydrogen storage, providing a mature technical pathway for large-scale underground hydrogen storage in China. It holds milestone significance for building an independent and controllable hydrogen energy reserve system and supporting the construction of a new-type energy system.