The Hydrogen Stream: Heavy-duty hydrogen refueling station in Germany

Denmark-based Everfuel awarded a contract to WSW mobil to build and commission a heavy-duty hydrogen refueling station big enough for at least 20 fuel cell buses in Wuppertal, Germany. “It is modular, so that the station can easily be expanded to refuel a larger number of hydrogen buses,” Everfuel said on Thursday. It added that it is about to assemble a 20 MW electrolyzer at its PtX HySynergy facility. The facility will be scaled to 300 MW in 2025 and 1 GW in 2030.

The European Hydrogen Backbone (EHB) initiative has accelerated its program to produce 20.6 million tons of renewable and low-carbon European hydrogen from 2025 to 2030. “The accelerated EHB vision shows that by 2030, five pan-European hydrogen supply and import corridors with almost 28,000 km of initial pipelines could emerge, connecting industrial clusters, ports, and hydrogen valleys to regions of abundant demand,” said the EHB. The group of 31 European gas transmission system operators also proposes a hydrogen network of around 53,000 km by 2040, which would require an investment of €80 billion ($86.8 billion) to €143 billion by using 60% repurposed natural gas pipelines and 40% new pipelines, including subsea links. “Transporting hydrogen over 1,000 km along the proposed onshore backbone would on average cost €0.11 to €0.21 per kilogram of hydrogen, making the EHB the most cost-effective option for large-scale, long-distance hydrogen transport. In case hydrogen is transported exclusively via subsea pipelines, the cost would be €0.17 to €0.32 per kilogram of hydrogen per 1,000 km transported.”

The UK government published its hydrogen investor roadmap, with plans to double its target to up to 10 GW of low-carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030. At least half of this will be from electrolytic hydrogen. The government has launched a GBP 240 million ($311.8 million) to support the production of hydrogen, and a further GBP 5 million toward research into carbon capture. “Increasing our production ambition could mobilize over GBP 9 billion of private investment (an increase of GBP 5 billion relative to 5 GW ambition),” said the government. It also published a report on the potential hydrogen emissions in different sectors across a future hydrogen value-chain. “There is an increasing body of evidence that leakage of hydrogen to the atmosphere will have an indirect warming effect on the climate and so should be minimized,” it said. 

Impact Coatings, a physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) coating specialist in Sweden, has announced the opening of a subsidiary in Shanghai. “The objective of the opening is to distribute Impact Coatings' market-leading expertise in PVD coatings for hydrogen solutions and to improve the availability of Coating Services solutions to Chinese customers in the hydrogen value chain,” the company said on Thursday. Impact Coatings is already present in the Chinese fuel cell market. 

Green Hydrogen Systems has signed an agreement with Gaznat to deliver electrolysis equipment for its Innovation Lab in Switzerland. The order includes the supply of an electrolyzer with a capacity of 0.5 MW. “When fully operational, the ordered electrolyzer will have the capacity to supply approximately 195 kg of green hydrogen per day. The hydrogen will be used to produce synthetic methane with a new and innovative methanation reactor developed by Gaznat, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne nd GRZ Technologies. The synthetic methane will be injected into the distribution grid covering the region of Chablais in Switzerland,” said Denmark-based Green Hydrogen Systems, which is a supplier of pressurized alkaline electrolyzers.

PKN Orlen will spend PLN 7.4bn (€1.6 billion) by 2030 on low- and zero-carbon hydrogen development projects based on renewable energy sources and municipal waste conversion technology. “As a result, ten hydrogen hubs will be developed by the end of the decade, with motorists in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia provided with access to a network of over 100 hydrogen refuelling stations,” said the Polish state oil refiner and petrol retailer.

The Ontario government in Canada has released a low-carbon hydrogen strategy to accelerate the development of the low-carbon hydrogen economy. “As part of this strategy, the government is supporting a proposal from Atura Power, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ontario Power Generation, to build, own and operate the province's largest low-carbon hydrogen production facility in Niagara Falls. This project alone would expand the province's hydrogen production capacity eightfold,” the government wrote on Thursday. The proposed facility would be a source of low-carbon hydrogen with a 20-megawatt (MW) electrolyzer.

Next Hydrogen Solutions, an Ontario-based manufacturer of electrolyzers, has signed a deal with Black & Veatch to offer a complete and integrated solution to produce large-scale green hydrogen for industrial and transportation customers. Under the non-exclusive agreement, Next Hydrogen and Black & Veatch will develop a large-scale, multi-megawatt green hydrogen solution and identify additional collaboration opportunities.

E.ON has teamed up with Belgium-based Tree Energy Solutions (TES) to import green hydrogen at scale into Germany. The tie-up follows its deal with Australia-based Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) for up to 5 million tons per year of green hydrogen to Europe by 2030. “TES is developing a green energy hub in the German port of Wilhelmshaven. The energy hub will feature a receiving terminal, storage facilities and a clean, zero-emissions oxy-fuel combustion power plant,” E.ON said. The German company plans “to build the Wilhelmshaven location into a hub for international hydrogen trading and upgrade the infrastructure accordingly,” said Paul van Poecke, managing director of TES.

MPreis has commissioned an electrolysis plant in Völs, near Innsbruck, Austria. “The plant will initially prove that the electrolyzer can be used to compensate for fluctuations in the Austrian electricity grid. Soon, the Therese Mölk bakery will also use hydrogen to heat baking ovens. We also want to put the first fuel cell trucks on the road as early as May 2022,” said the Austrian food retailer. The first three vehicles, reportedly the first of their kind in Austria, will be refueled at the company's own H2 filling station.

HydroGraph Clean Power, a spinoff of Kansas State University, is commercializing a detonation method to create graphene and hydrogen-rich syngas, based on channeling acetylene and oxygen in a small chamber to create a controlled detonation. “The research not only led to a pilot-scale graphene production device, but another discovery: an environmentally benign, inexpensive method to make hydrogen,” said Kansas State University. HydroGraph Clean Power recently went public on the Canadian Securities Exchange.