Net scarcity is the new word to take into account. We are all consuming more and more electricity and in more and more places the electricity grid is finding it difficult to cope with this. The company DENS in Helmond may have a solution.
The company makes generators that allow you to generate electricity in a sustainable way. Electricity that you can then use in places where there is no electricity. For example on construction sites or a festival site. “You throw in the liquid hydrozine and power comes out.”
Tijs Swinkels of DENS tells full of energy about the almost accidental discovery of the effect of formic acid, hydrozine. It was while carrying out an assignment at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) that he and his fellow students discovered that hydrogen could be made very quickly with this hydrozine. Under the DENS banner, the so-called hydrozine (sustainably produced formic acid) generator has been further developed, especially for use in construction. No wall power is available on construction sites and diesel generators are now being used.
Hydrogen as a sustainable fuel is not new. Think of cars that run on hydrogen. Until now, storage and distribution has been complicated. DENS makes the storage of hydrogen safer and more efficient by converting the gas for storage into formic acid. In the generator itself, it is then converted back to hydrogen, which can be used to generate energy directly. †
“The aggregate is 100 percent climate neutral: no particulate matter, no nitrogen and, above all, no noise,” says Swinkels. Something that is a completely different story with a diesel generator. “Recently there was one in Eindhoven in front of the town hall and everyone walks around it with a big bow. It smells. Nobody wants anything to do with that dirty thing. And that can be different.”
For example, the company can supply a generator to an apartment complex that runs off gas. “Making the apartment complex more sustainable in this way requires a much heavier grid connection. After all, much more power is required for that complex. That connection will then take a long time. By temporarily installing one of our generators there, the residents can return to their homes and there will be power until the new grid connection is ready.”
Being able to supply emission-free electricity to any place you want, there is a future for that. For example, the first aggregates will be delivered to construction companies and festivals. But the demand for mobile devices for charging electric cranes, for example, is also growing. DENS is already growing quite well.
“We now employ 42 people,” says Swinkels. It doesn’t stop there. The company is working on a new building where about a thousand machines per year can be produced. Of course, this also requires more people, whom DENS is now training itself. “There are very few people who really understand what we do here. Therefore, it is difficult to find good workers. That is why we started training them ourselves.”
According to forecasts, the company will grow to 300 employees in the coming years. Something to be proud of. “We are seen and we have received a substantial international subsidy. Thanks to these subsidies, we can continue to build, because what we do is very capital-intensive. But we also do it for a better world.”