Abstract
Worldwide about 550 hydrogen refueling stations (HRS) were in operation in 2021, of which 38%. were in Europe. With their number expected to grow even further, the collection and investigation of real-world station operative data are fundamental to tracking their activity in terms of safety issues, performances, costs, maintenance, reliability, and energy use. This paper shows and analyses the parameters that characterize the refueling of 350 bar fuel cell buses in four HRS within the 3Emotion project. The HRS are characterized by different refueling capacities, hydrogen supply schemes, storage volumes and pressures, and operational strategies. From data logs provided by the operators, a dataset of three years of operation has been created. In particular total hydrogen quantity, the fill amount dispensed to each bus, the refueling duration, the average mass flow rate, the number of refueling events and the daily number of refills, the daily profile, the utilization factor, and the availability are investigated. The results show similar hydrogen amount per fill distribution, but quite different refueling times among the stations. The average daily mass per bus is around 12.95 kg, the most frequent value 15 kg, the standard deviation 7.46. About 50% of the total amount of hydrogen is dispensed overnight and the refueling events per bus are typically every 24 hours. Finally, the station utilization is below 30% for all sites.
Highlights
Supported by regulators, investors, and consumers, hydrogen is strongly emerging as one of the principal protagonists among the actors for the global shift towards a decarbonized road transportation system
This paper shows and analyses the parameters that characterize the refueling of 350 bar fuel cell buses in four hydrogen refueling stations (HRS) within the 3Emotion project
The results show similar hydrogen amount per fill distribution, but quite different refueling times among the stations
Summary
Investors, and consumers, hydrogen is strongly emerging as one of the principal protagonists among the actors for the global shift towards a decarbonized road transportation system. The United States Department of Energy has launched Hydrogen at Scale, an initiative that promotes R&D projects aiming at affordable hydrogen production, transport, storage, and utilization [2]. There are around 550 Hydrogen Refueling Stations (HRS) worldwide. In the majority of the HRS the hydrogen is stored as a compressed gas at pressures up to 700 bar [8] and delivered into the onboard vehicle tanks. A study that shows the HRS operational performance in terms of hydrogen quantity delivered to the vehicle, refueling duration and station utilization applied to real-world stations has been less investigated. The stations are characterized by different refueling capacities (kgH2/day), hydrogen supply schemes (in-situ production or delivery), storage volumes and pressures, and operational strategies. The ultimate aim is to provide a global outlook of the actual functioning of small/medium size hydrogen stations, investigating their availability, capacity utilization and technical performance and benchmarking their status
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