Air Liquide to Supply Portable Hydrogen Fueling Systems to GM in the US; Linde Opens Hamburg Hydrogen Station
31 May 2007
Air Liquide Advanced Technologies US, LLC will supply five, 700-bar, portable fast-fill hydrogen fueling systems to General Motors (GM) in the US. GM will also have an option to acquire two additional systems. The systems will be built in North America, with proprietary engineering designs from Air Liquide’s Advanced Technologies teams, and should be operational by the end of 2007.
The Air Liquide refueling stations are designed to allow vehicles to refuel in less than three minutes to cover a range of several hundred kilometers. The company has already designed, built and commissioned a number of hydrogen stations over the past five years, including in Madrid (bus fleet); Kawasaki; Luxembourg; Shanghai (a mobile station for the Michelin Challenge Bibendum); Singapore; and one for a European automobile manufacturer. Air Liquide has a permanent demonstration station in Sassenage (France).
This is Air Liquide’s second collaboration with GM related to hydrogen fueling. Air Liquide is also working with GM in Canada, having installed a fueling system at GM’s Cold Weather Testing site for hydrogen vehicles, in Kapuskasing, Ontario.
Separately, a hydrogen filling station developed and built by Linde was officially put into service at the Hamburg, Germany airport. The transportable supply unit is used to fill two fuel-cell-driven STILL tractors and a people-carrier which will, in future, be in daily use at the airport.
The project, planned to last two years represents a partnership between the Hamburg Regional Initiative for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology, Hamburg Airport, Wasserstoffgesellschaft Hamburg and The Linde Group.
Airport applications are particularly suitable as pilot projects for developing a local hydrogen infrastructure. The clear cut operating range and the central refuelling predestine this application for the use of hydrogen as emission-free fuel.
—Dr. Joachim Wolf, Executive Director of Hydrogen Solutions at Linde
All the components of the filling station are built into a container only three metres long; the hydrogen is delivered by Linde in bundles of gas cylinders. Since the fuel-cell-driven tractors operate at an operating pressure of 350 bar and the people-carrier operates at 200 bar, two separate tapping systems are provided.
The entire installation is controlled by a programmable logic control which guarantees both automated filling and the highest possible standard of safety. The filling process takes seven minutes at most.
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