Source: European Investment Bank
Decarbonising heavy transport is tricky. Electric buses and trucks are expensive, and they take a long time to charge.
Hydrogen could solve the problem. It’s easy to transport and can refuel a heavy vehicle in minutes. But hydrogen, the lightest of elements, has a low energy content, so it must be compressed to fit enough of the gas into a vehicle to run it. The problem: hydrogen is highly flammable, and compression heats it up.
“You need to build up the pressure very carefully, because you can’t just put highly pressurised gas into a tank,” says Herman Roose, chief financial officer at Resato Hydrogen Technology, a Dutch company that has been working on hydrogen refuelling since 2016. “Without the right approach, it will heat up to over 100 degrees, which is very dangerous.”
High pressure is what makes hydrogen a viable fuel. The light and airy gas must be compressed to 700 bars for a car and about 350 bars for a truck, although new heavy vehicle technologies may require 700 bars. The overall system needs to maintain a pressure of 950 bars, roughly equivalent to the pressure in the deepest parts of the ocean. “That’s not easy,” Roose says.
The company’s technology pressurises the gas without having the temperature rise too fast. If it does, the pumping system shuts off. Pulling up to a petrol station and seeing “out of order” on a pump isn’t a big deal when you can just drive a couple kilometres to the next station. Hydrogen refuelling stations, however, will be far and few between – about 200 kilometres apart on major roads, according to EU plans.
Resato sells its system directly to big station operators, like Total of France and Hypion of Germany. The whole process fits in a shed-like structure that sits above ground and pumps compressed hydrogen to fuelling points with specialised nozzles for cars, trucks and buses.
“A lot of operators buy components for hydrogen refuelling, put them together and hope the system works,” Roose says. “But we have our own fully integrated and owned technology.”
The European Investment Bank signed a €25 million venture debt facility with Resato Hydrogen in January. The financing was made possible by an InvestEU guarantee.