Hydrogen Generator System

The Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL) is Britain's leading industrial health and safety facility. Operating as the Science Directorate of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), HSL supports HSE’s mission to protect people's health and safety by ensuring risks in the changing workplace are properly controlled.

Hydrogen generators are used at HSL to eliminate hydrogen gas lines and cylinders and supply high purity hydrogen to test equipment. For the purposes of this invitation to tender it is necessary for HSL to be open and fair to possible sources that believe they can meet these requirements and may submit a tender.

The Health & Safety Laboratory is inviting tenders for the supply of Hydrogen Generator(s) suitable for providing hydrogen to up to three hydrogen flame photometers. Each photometer can run for up to 10 hours a day, and requires a flow of 400 to 600 millilitres per minute of hydrogen at a pressure of 1 bar. Depending on the work required, the photometer can be out of use for several months at a time; during this time, the hydrogen generators will be switched off. At start of new work, the generators will be switched back on. Previous experience of running our flame photometers using hydrogen generators of an earlier design was unsuccessful, as the necessary stop/start operation caused the generators to fail. This will need to be avoided. A supply of deionised water is available, but it will not be possible to pipe this to the hydrogen generators; they will need to be topped up by hand. The reservoir must be of sufficient size to run the hydrogen generators for at least 5 hours under the use described above.

Additional information: Contract start date is estimated subject to approval and award.

HSL has applied broad estimates in the lowest and highest value fields in the 'Summary Information' section.