China Deploys Its First Salt Cavern Hydrogen Storage Facility in Henan

China has commissioned its first salt cavern hydrogen storage facility in Pingdingshan, Henan Province, achieving an operational storage scale of 1.5 million standard cubic meters. According to an account in People's Daily authored by an engineer at the Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the project overcomes severe geological leakage risks associated with China's interlayered salt rock formations. Equipped with domestically developed hydrogen-resistant casings and an integrated monitoring system, the facility is designed to buffer renewable electricity and supply industrial green hydrogen.

Large-scale hydrogen storage remains a critical missing link in scaling up green hydrogen supply chains globally. While conventional surface tanks are limited in capacity and expensive to maintain, underground salt caverns offer massive volume, low operational costs, and high safety. Demonstrating successful hydrogen containment in layered salt geology bridges the gap between intermittent renewable energy generation and industrial decarbonization needs in sectors like metallurgy and chemical manufacturing.

In an effort to overcome long-standing bottlenecks in green energy storage, researchers in China have established the country's first subterranean salt cavern hydrogen storage facility in Pingdingshan, Henan Province. According to a report published in People's Daily by an engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, the facility is currently operating safely with a storage volume of 1.5 million standard cubic meters of hydrogen. Salt cavern storage—created in underground voids left by salt mining—offers large capacity, strong sealing, and low unit costs compared to traditional surface pressure tanks. While similar subterranean sites in China have stored over 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas, storing hydrogen presents distinct engineering hurdles. Hydrogen molecules are significantly smaller and more diffusive than methane, increasing leakage risks. Furthermore, hydrogen induces corrosion and embrittlement in standard metal and concrete materials. Geological conditions in China added further complexity. Unlike the uniform salt domes common in Western Europe and North America, Chinese salt deposits are predominantly layered, featuring alternating strata of salt rock and highly permeable mudstone. To address this, researchers extracted rock cores from depths of approximately 1,300 meters to conduct hundreds of hydrogen seepage experiments. This testing established new criteria for site selection, cavern depth, and containment boundaries. The project team also deployed domestically produced casing materials engineered to resist hydrogen corrosion and embrittlement. To ensure operational safety, an integrated monitoring system tracks real-time parameters across the surface, wellbore, and cavern, including hydrogen concentrations, gas-water interface levels, and subterranean vibrations. The Pingdingshan facility is designed to absorb surplus renewable electricity by converting it into hydrogen, helping to smooth power grid fluctuations. The stored green hydrogen can subsequently serve as raw material for chemical and metallurgical industries or supply regional hydrogen refueling infrastructure. Researchers plan to further standardize the construction and operational model to replicate salt cavern storage across other domestic salt mining districts.