Measurement of the hydrogenation level of dibenzyltoluene in an innovative energy storage system

Abstract The share of renewable energy in the major advanced economies has increased during the last years in order to cope with the limited stocks of fossil fuels. Since the use of renewable resources goes hand in hand with well-known problems as for example the fluctuating availability, energy storage systems are the methods of choice to deal with this issue. One of the most promising storage technologies consists in using hydrogen which can be stored amongst others by hydrogenation of Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC). During the catalytic hydrogenation of LOHC double bonds are broken down to single bonds and the hydrogen is bound chemically sTable Since this approach is still in development phase, it is necessary to evaluate this storage technology using known measuring methods. Raman Spectroscopy is a method to measure the change of the level of hydrogenation at the time and place of manufacture due to the change of the number of double bonds. The aim is to develop a method to evaluate this storage facility to depict changes in the process conditions directly. This study represents the groundwork, which is needed to implement Raman Spectroscopy as an in-situ online-measurement system to evaluate the performance level of a novel energy storage system.