Hydrogenics was a company developing electrolyzers and fuel cells, notably for “power to gas” solutions. It was acquired by Cummings and Air Liquide in September 2019.
The Hydrogenics story
In 1988, Traduction Militech Translation was born, which became Hydrogenics in 1990. It has been developing fuel cell technologies since 1995.
It acquired EnKAT GmbH and Greenlight Power Technologies(fuel cells) and Stuart Energy(alkaline electrolyzers) in 2002, 2003 and 2004 respectively. In 2010, the company developed a partnership with a telecommunications company, Commscope. The latter invested $8.5 million.
It has developed numerous projects, including power-to-gas demonstrators and hydrogen stations.
The company was acquired by Cummings (81.4%) and Air Liquide (18.6%) on September 9, 2019, for a total of $290 million.
Hydrogen products
Currently, the “http://www.hydrogenics.com” site links to the Cummings site. However, by browsing the site’s archive, you can find what the company was offering. It can be found on this page:
- PEM and alkaline electrolyzers for industrial applications and recharging stations.
- Fuel cells for hydrogen-powered vehicles (city transit buses, commercial fleets, utility vehicles or forklift trucks)
- Fuel cells for stationary applications
- “Power-to-Gas
You’ll learn a lot of interesting things when you read their product sheets.
Alkaline or PEM electrolyzers
Let’s start with the“HySTAT™10 – INDOOR” model. This is an alkaline electrolyzer producing between 4 and 10 Nm3/h(= “normo-meters” not “nanometers”), which would correspond to 8.6 to 21.5 kg/day. Outlet pressure would be 10 bar (30 bar optional). Without the HPS (Hydrogen Purification System), purity would be 99.9% versus 99.998% with it. There is even an option to go beyond 99.999%. It would consume 4.9 kWh/Nm3 and have an output of 140 kW.
We can immediately see the problem of hydrogen purity: some applications like electronics require it to be extreme: < 2ppm!
HySTAT™60 – OUTDOOR, meanwhile, could produce 24 to 60Nm3/h, or 52 to 130kg per day. Its maximum power would be 515KW.
Both appear to take the form of a container, with a volume of around 15 tonnes. Some models can be combined with a compressor capable of compressing the gas to 150 or 200 bar.
Power-to-gas solutions
They have obviously launched a number of “power to gas” projects. Many are planning to use combustion engines to generate electricity, rather than fuel cells, which are several times more efficient…
- Galicia, Spain: a HySTAT60 would be coupled to 24 wind turbines so that hydrogen could be stored, then burned by a combustion engine to produce energy. I imagine to absorb production peaks?
- Port Talbot, Wales. 20kW of solar/wind would power a HySTAT10, a storage system and a HyPM 12kW fuel cell.
- Meckl-Vorpommern, Germany. Uses a 140MW wind farm to power 1MW electrolysers, coupled with a compression and storage system. Electricity is generated by a combustion engine.
- Stuttgart, Germany. A HySTAT60 would recover CO2 from a biogas plant to methanize hydrogen. I don’t get it: it’s a loop, minus the efficiency losses. They use electricity to make H2, then methanize it, and turn it into electricity.
- Falkenhagen, Germany. A 2MW electrolyzer plant (6 HySTAT60) and a compressor would absorb surplus energy and inject H2 into gas pipelines.
- Puglia, Italy. 1MW electrolyser would produce 200Nm3 of hydrogen, which could be stored in a 39MWh “solid hydrogen” (= probably hydrogen hydrides) storage facility.
- Herten, Germany. A 50kW fuel cell system and a HySTAT30 to absorb surplus energy.
They also offer hydrogen refueling stations, and there are about twenty projects, but I don’t go into detail.