What is the problem/issue being addressed?
Hydrogen has the potential to be a clean and sustainable energy carrier for our society. Currently there are two critical issues for the successful integration of hydrogen in our energy infrastructure:
Firstly, most countries do not have an area-wide network of hydrogen distribution and filling stations to supply affordable hydrogen sufficiently.
Secondly, hydrogen is a secondary energy carrier and its ecological characteristic depends on the feedstock and the production method. Up to day, hydrogen is produced in large centralised plants by the reforming of fossil fuels and thus this hydrogen cannot be considered a clean source of energy. Additionally, these large-scale plants suffer from poor down scalability for decentralised systems. Hence the produced hydrogen is transported with trucks in gaseous or liquid form or via pipelines over long distances. Truck transportation of hydrogen consumes huge amounts of energy and significantly increases the volume of traffic. The delivery via a pipeline network demands huge financial investments, which hinders a fast expansion of the hydrogen infrastructure. Furthermore the centralised production requires large buffer storage systems at the consumer sites to compensate for demand fluctuations and potential supply chain interruptions. Conclusion: The centralised hydrogen production with its long distance distribution logistics increases the total production costs of hydrogen considerably and prevents the successful integration of hydrogen as clean energy source into our society.
Rouge H2 Engineering GmbH is a company dedicated to cutting down air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions by developing the most competitive hydrogen production system for cleaner, smarter and more efficient decentral hydrogen production.
Why is it important for society?
The reduction of harmful GHG emissions as well as the transition from fossil fuels towards environmentally friendly and renewable forms of energy are two critical challenges of our time.
The Fuel Cell technology utilising hydrogen has the potential of supplying us with emission free electricity in stationary and mobile applications. In order to harness the potential of hydrogen as clean energy source we have to assure an area-wide infrastructure, which is able to supply clean and affordable hydrogen. Besides that, producing hydrogen out of biogas can help the struggling biogas plants to open a new business and supports the installation of infrastructure especially in rural areas.
Hydrogen produced with the current technology cannot be considered a clean source of energy. The development of technologies for the production of clean hydrogen is critical, since it reduces our dependency on fossil energy sources, reduces the amount of foreign energy imports and enables the transition into a sustainable society.
The utilisation of locally available renewable resources enhances the development of rural regions in Europe, while reducing the emissions of harmful GHG emissions. The reduction of non-renewable CO2 is considered the most important contribution to reverse the effects of manmade global warming and to diminish the anthropogenic influence on climate change.
What are the overall objectives?
Rouge H2 Engineering GmbH is developing the highly innovative system for a decentralised sustainable hydrogen production. This on-site on-demand technology enables the supply of affordable clean hydrogen, which can be directly utilised for various applications ranging from industrial process over stationary heat and power generation to mobility applications in fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). The decentral application enables the efficient exploitation of locally available renewable resources ensuring a sustainable production of affordable hydrogen.
The main tasks in the current project phase are:
• Specification of the system scale and hydrogen output of the first generation of the demonstration units.
• Innovative system development and engineering for the manufacturing of a high efficiency clean hydrogen production system.
• Development of a strategy for a continuous optimisation of the system to increase its efficiency and expand its application flexibility.
• Analysis of the hydrogen market to identify the segments with the highest demand for decentralised hydrogen production to enable a quick and successful integration of the first commercially available OSOD system into the market.
• A close cooperation and continuous communication between partners and Rouge H2 Engineering GmbH to optimise the ongoing product development towards a system that perfectly fits the customers’ needs.
