Beijing Opens First Hydrogen Fueling Station

9 November 2006

People’s Daily. China’s first hydrogen refueling station opened Wednesday at the Zhongguancun Yongfeng High-Tech Industrial Base in the Beijing Hydrogen Park. BP operates the station, which is in the Beijing suburbs. It is BP’s largest hydrogen station yet.

BP has invested a total of US$3.5 million in the Sino-British joint venture. The Chinese partner, SinoHytec, an enterprise linked to Tsinghua University, provided the land required for the project.

The Chinese station, which currently uses transported hydrogen, will be able to reform syngas (produced from coal) to hydrogen on-site next year.

The Beijing Hydrogen Park comprises a research and development center, a hydrogen refueling station, a fuel-cell vehicle garage and a maintenance workshop. It will handle several international trial programs and also fuel the hydrogen vehicle fleet for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Three Daimler-Chrysler made fuel cell buses went into trial operation in Beijing in June and five vehicles made by Tsinghua University are currently being tested.

The BP station uses Air Products’ Series 300 fueling technology—an integrated vehicle fueling system that compresses and dispenses hydrogen to the vehicles. This fueling technology is designed to meet early vehicle fleet fueling requirements by providing the customer flexibility of using hydrogen generated on-site, or a distributed hydrogen supply.