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AIR Products is building the  world’s first 24-hour self-service hydrogen fuelling station, which will open at Hürth, Germany in March 2010. Waste hydrogen produced by local chlor alkali plants will be trucked 1.5 km to the station, and supply fuel to buses run by the local council.

The move will help dispel the commonly-held belief that the hydrogen economy is impossible to reach says Ian Williamson, director of hydrogen energy systems at the company

Some have argued that the hydrogen economy is a non-starter – that no-one will invest in fuel infrastructure such as pipes and filling stations until masses of hydrogen-powered cars take to the roads. Added to that, car manufacturers will not make a wholesale investment in new hydrogen powered-vehicles until the infrastructure is in place for consumers to use the roads as they do now and drive where they please.

Not so, says Williamson who claims that the station could become a template for spreading the hydrogen economy through society by degrees. While hydrogen-powered forklift trucks are already operating in industrial chemical parks, new initiatives will introduce more people to the technology and help spread the infrastructure to outlying projects immediately surrounding hydrogen-rich regions, he says.

Air Products is considering using the technology in the UK. Using a modular station design the company could bring down construction costs and validate safety. “In the UK, Runcorn and Teesside would be good regions from which to start,” Williamson tells tce.

He adds that hydrogen from industrial applications needs purifying to suit cars so the company has taken an interest in processes like plasma gasification, which produces a very clean exit gas stream. Furthermore, waste hydrogen isn’t in short supply. The company estimates it can power 40,000 cars using just 8% of the hydrogen produced by chemical plants around the Hürth project. Eventually, it will stop trucking the hydrogen to the station and invest in a pipeline.

Although this strategy could eventually help to solve the ‘chicken-and-egg’ vehicles-infrastructure dilemma, obstacles such as storage limits and fuel cell costs still remain, says Williamson. These could be overcome after  car manufacturing consortia  presented a unified front and sent a message of confidence to government and technology developers concerning future fuel cell investment. A number of companies including Daimler, Kia, and Toyota announced in September that they plan on producing cost-competitive hydrogen powered cars by 2015.

Williamson says once fuel cells are produced en masse for much lower costs he expects they will be used in hybrid vehicles that use batteries for shorter trips around town, and hydrogen fuel for longer expeditions.