A team of researchers from the CSIC develops the first hydrogen generator (like a gas station, but with hydrogen) in Spain that will be for public use and that will use green hydrogen generated on-site with solar energy. The six existing stations in the Peninsula up to now are not of public service.
The hydrogen will be obtained through electrolyzers powered by a system of solar trackers and photovoltaic panels located at the service station itself. In addition, it will have an intelligent control system that will provide predictions of production and demand. The hydroelectric plant will have a minimum renewable production capacity of 60 kg of hydrogen per day. It will be capable of supplying trucks, buses, passenger cars and warehouses and logistics for transport and is scheduled to come into operation at the end of 2022.
The new technology will be tested thanks to an agreement with the service station company Zoilo Ríos. It will be tested at the company’s facilities at the El Cisne service station, on the A-2 motorway (Madrid-Barcelona), a few kilometers from Zaragoza.
“The objective of this development is to demonstrate, in real service conditions, the potential of this technology”, explains the CSIC researcher Luis Valiño, from the Fluid Dynamics and Combustion Technologies Research Laboratory (LIFTEC), currently part of the Institute of Carbochemistry (ICB). The new hydrogen will have the addition of technology developed by research groups from LIFTEC and the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Computing (IRI, CSIC-UPC).
“This new hydro generator offers several advantages: it will have an intelligent control system to coordinate its operation and it will provide modularity and flexibility,” explains Valiño, the researcher responsible for the project, which has the collaboration of the researcher María Serra, from the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Computing (IRI, CSIC-UPC).
smart monitoring
“The intelligent control system will provide predictions of production and demand”, Valino says. “It will include meteorological calculations that will allow the irradiation of solar energy to be predicted 48/72 hours ahead and artificial intelligence algorithms to optimize the system economically and energetically. The entire system will be remotely controllable via the internet,” he adds.
Being modular and flexible, the hydro generator will allow it to adapt to different demands (vehicle flow, time distribution…), to different locations (availability of renewable resources, network connection, connection power). “The objective is that, once the demonstration phase is over, the technology is marketable and widely penetrates the market”Valino points out.
This initiative aims to serve as a model for the implementation of the future network of hydrogen stations in Spain. This collaboration between the CSIC and the company Zoilo Ríos will take place over three years (until December 2024) and will allow the CSIC research groups to evaluate the operation of the different technologies that will be used in the facility, both in terms of regarding the generation of Htwo renewable energy such as storage, advanced energy management and dispensing.
For its part, the company will be responsible for the tasks of adapting the service station and the administrative procedures required for the installation, as well as providing the necessary resources for the operation of the hydroelectric plant during the start-up and demonstration phase. , and will also take care of maintenance. Once the project is completed, the agreement contemplates the transfer of the developed technology to Grupo Zoilo Ríos through an exclusive exploitation license.
The development of this hydro generator is part of the action plan of the TransEner Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform, recently created by the CSIC, which carries out research aimed at improving the generation of renewable energy, its storage and logistics and distribution problems, with the help of European funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
Hydrogen plant in Alicante for buses and trucks
Green hydrogen is one of the leading bets of science for the replacement of conventional fuel. In this regard, it should be remembered that the Alicante-based company Vectalia, the urban transport concessionaire in the province of Alicante, part of Extremadura and French cities, Aguas de Alicante, Iberdrola and the Qatari fund FRV constituted in November the HyVus consortium to promote sustainable transport using green hydrogen as fuel.
The project contemplates building a plant on land next to a treatment plant, where the first hydroelectric plant (like a gas station, but with hydrogen) in the province will also be located to supply, in principle, 80 Vectalia buses and trucks from Alicante companies dedicated to transport.
The project has a budget of around 10 million euros in its initial phase and is eligible to receive financing from the Next Generation funds. It contemplates the construction of a 10 MW powered hydrolysis plant associated with a photovoltaic plant.
Fewer than 12,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles are currently in circulation around the world. and half of them do it in the United States. It is a bet still very minority, which in Spain registers around half a dozen cars a year, a totally testimonial figure.
Precisely, the lack of hydrogen (as well as the high price of cars) is currently one of the main brakes on this clean source of mobility.