In a landmark milestone for global hydrogen energy development, China’s first one-million-cubic-meter-scale salt cavern hydrogen storage demonstration project officially entered commercial operation on Saturday in Pingdingshan, a city in China’s central Henan province. The launch pushes the nation’s renewable energy transition and hydrogen industrialization agenda into an unprecedented new phase, industry leaders confirmed at the opening ceremony.
Salt cavern hydrogen storage is widely recognized as a transformative solution to one of the clean energy sector’s most persistent bottlenecks: low-cost, large-scale long-duration hydrogen storage and transport that can underpin the buildout of resilient new energy systems. Yang Chunhe, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, emphasized this critical role in remarks at the commissioning event. “This technology is the key to unlocking wide adoption of hydrogen as a mainstream clean energy source by removing the barriers that have held back large-scale storage and transportation to support new energy system construction,” Yang explained.
The project leverages the high-purity natural salt rock deposits held by a gas storage and salt chemical subsidiary of the China Pingmei Shenma Group, a major state-owned energy and chemical enterprise. A collaborative cross-institutional team delivered the facility: core technological innovations were spearheaded by the Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with engineering design and construction carried out in partnership with two of China’s largest national energy giants, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec).
Liang Wuxing, deputy chief economist of China Pingmei Shenma, outlined the facility’s key specifications. The project developed a purpose-built water-soluble salt cavern with a total internal volume exceeding 30,000 cubic meters, delivering a total working hydrogen storage capacity of 1.5 million standard cubic meters. Currently, the facility operates two high-pressure compressors that inject hydrogen at 15 megapascals, with a steady injection rate of 2,000 standard cubic meters per hour.
Unlike single-bodied thick salt formations common to many existing salt cavern storage sites, this project stores hydrogen in layered salt rock structures, a geological condition that accounts for most of China’s salt resource reserves. Yang confirmed that the operational launch has already formally verified both the long-term sealing reliability and full engineering feasibility of hydrogen storage in this common geological structure, clearing a major path for wider replication across the country.
Looking ahead, the project’s engineering team has committed to advancing new development pathways for bulk hydrogen energy adoption. The team will work to commercialize the technology and test a range of diversified hydrogen use cases, from blending hydrogen into existing natural gas pipeline networks to fuel for hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks and hydrogen-fired industrial boilers.