HyFast - Fast hydrogen fueling and long range for fuel cell vehicles

Project Information

HyFast

Grant agreement ID: 674440

DOI

10.3030/674440

Project closed

EC signature date 19 May 2015

Start date 1 June 2015

End date 31 May 2017

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 2 856 367,50

EU contribution

€ 1 999 457,25

Coordinated by

Cavendish Hydrogen A/S
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HyFast (HyFast - Fast hydrogen fueling and long range for fuel cell vehicles)

Reporting period: 2016-06-01 to 2017-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The HyFast project has developed a new generation hydrogen fueling station with reduced costs and equipment footprint and increased fueling capacity. The objective has been to enable inte-gration of hydrogen fueling at conventional gasoline stations in a cost effective manner.

All major car manufacturers are active on preparing market introduction of Fuel Cell Electric Ve-hicle for selected global market regions. The societal gains from hydrogen is a long range and fast fueling as experienced in conventional vehicles, however with zero emission. Also hydrogen can be produced from a variety of energy sources, in particular renewable ones. For Europe this enables utilization of the increasing amount of fluctuating renewable electricity, to production of transport fuel within Europe.

HyFast specifically has developed a new generation hydrogen fueling station, where the daily capacity is doubled to 200kg per day, sufficient to fuel around 50 vehicles. To accommodate peak demands during rush hours the instant 3 hour capacity has been doubled to 100kg per day. Despite the capacity increase the equipment footprint has been reduced with 50%, in order to enable integration at conventional fueling stations.

The performance has been validated by extensive test operation during the project with almost 1.000 fuelings conducted and 4.000kg of hydrogen dispensed.

During the project a new generation of hydrogen fueling station has also been launched with orders and deliveries for the first customers also received for customers in both Europe and USA.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The first period of the HyFast project has included extensive development activities on key com-ponents of the new generation hydrogen fueling station, covering among others: a new station module design with compressor, fueling control and hydrogen cooling systems, connected to an external hydrogen storage and dispenser.

The second and last period of HyFast have included construction of a new full scale prototype of the new generation hydrogen fueling station. The prototype have undergone extensive tests to very performance and reaching of the project objectives.

On the prototype more than 551 fuelings and 2626 kg of hydrogen has successfully been dis-pensed helping to validate the functionality of the station. Also the tests have enabled a continu-ous improvement of the design with several iterations on mechanics and software.
Groundbreaking tests of the instant fueling capacity needed for traffic-rush-hours have also been conducted successfully. As the first in the world, the project prototype has achieved dispensing of 100kg of hydrogen at 70MPa in only 3 hours allocated on 18 high capacity fuelings with a com-bined driving range of 10,000 km.

In addition field-test of the new generation hydrogen fueling station product has been conducted at a customers for seven months with a total of 461 fuelings and 1237kg of hydrogen dispensed. The field tests have helped further improve the station design in particular with regards to achieve high availability and thus reliable operation.

During the course of the project parallel activities has been conducted on product maturing re-sulting in the launch of a new hydrogen fueling station product named H2Station® CAR-200. The first customers and later deliveries were also secured before end of the project. For Europe or-ders of 10 H2Station® has been achieved so far, with two units already delivered. For USA orders on H2Station® for six locations in California has been secured, among others for the international oil company Shell, in collaboration with Toyota.

Further about the finalized H2Station® product can be found here:
http://nelhydrogen.com/product/h2-station/

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The technical achievements of HyFast is an important contribution to enabling a commercializa-tion of the use of hydrogen as a renewable fuel for zero emission vehicles.

HyFast has doubled the daily fueling capacity, tripled the instant fueling capacity of hydrogen fueling stations compared to state-of-the-art. This has been achieved whilst still reducing equip-ment footprint with 50%, which enables an easier integration of hydrogen at conventional fuel-ing stations right next to gasoline and diesel.

Despite the double capacity the actual investment costs for the hydrogen fueling station has been reduced with approximately 25% - a significant contribution to reducing the infrastructure investments costs for hydrogen fueling measured as €/kg capacity.

The results of HyFast has enabled H2 Logic (now named Nel Hydrogen) to decide on the invest-ment in product maturing and large scale manufacturing of the H2Station® CAR-200. H2 Logic has among others commenced a €9 million investment in the world’s largest factory for hydro-gen fueling stations. When fully expanded the factory can produce up to 300 hydrogen stations per year, sufficient for fueling of 200.000 new FCEVs annually. http://h2logic.com/h2-logic-to-develop-worlds-largest-factory-for-hydrogen-fueling-stations/

The increased manufacturing capacity will be necessary for enabling a continued roll-out of widespread hydrogen fueling station networks in selected global market regions such as Europe, California and Japan.

H2Station CAR-200 developed in the HyFast project