Air Liquide, Toyota, Shell, and Hyundai are among several major players within the hydrogen industry that will collaborate on standardising hydrogen refuelling hardware to achieve fuelling rates of 10kg/min.
Revealed today (8th October), the Industry Group has signed the agreement with Tatsuno Corporation and Transfer Oil to industrialise globally standard 70 MPa hydrogen heavy-duty vehicle high flow fuelling hardware components.
It is hoped that this will address hydrogen fuelling hardware challenges to help achieve the fuelling speeds needed for heavy-duty applications today.
In doing so it is expected that this could support the roll out of the necessary infrastructure required to increase adoption of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
The Industry Group consists of Air Liquide, Hyundai, Nel Hydrogen, Nikola, Shell, and Toyota.
In addition to addressing the hardware challenges, other goals include testing and evaluating the hardware’s performance and standardising the connector design to ensure adoptability throughout the world.
The fuelling hardware is expected to support average hydrogen fuelling rates of 10kg/min with testing planned to commence in late 2021 with results available in 2022.
Andrew Garnett, Vice-President of Hydrogen at Air Liquide, said, “On March 23, Air Liquide announced its ambitious ESG objectives to ACT for a sustainable future. In full support of the 2015 Paris agreement, our commitments address the urgency of climate change and the energy transition, targeting carbon neutrality by 2050.
“The plan includes an acceleration in hydrogen development, something Air Liquide has been involved in for some time. Over the past 50 years, Air Liquide has developed a unique expertise, mastering the entire supply chain, from production and storage to distribution“As such, Air Liquide is contributing to the widespread use of hydrogen as a clean energy carrier for a wide range of applications such as industrial usages and clean mobility.”
Pablo Koziner, President of Energy and Commercial at Nikola, said, “This innovative fuelling technology will be an essential part of our hydrogen infrastructure development strategy, making hydrogen available to Nikola heavy-duty FCEV customers and the industry at large.”
Justin Ward, Group Manager of Toyota’s Fuel Cell Development Department, said, “This effort is a prime example of industry competitors working together towards a common goal of decarbonisation.
“Toyota is proud to be a member of this group and of the vision we share for a future where diesel trucks are replaced with zero emission hydrogen fuel cell electric technology.”
