Air Liquide to install three new hydrogen filling stations in Europe

By 2014, Air Liquide will design and install three new high-capacity (40 fill-ups per day) hydrogen filling stations in the cities of Bremen (Germany), Birmingham (Great Britain) and Brussels (Belgium).

These stations are part of the European project SWARM – the acronym stands for Demonstration of Small 4-Wheel fuel cell passenger vehicle Applications in Regional and Municipal transport. The aim of this project is to roll out 90 hydrogen-fueled passenger cars across Europe, the largest number of such vehicles ever made available for a demo project. This fleet will be supported by an infrastructure of hydrogen filling stations, some existing and others to come.

For a three-year period, the vehicles will be made available to individual drivers in order to gather detailed data on how they are used. This phase of the project will help experts produce a set of recommendations aimed at optimizing the deployment of the hydrogen-fueled passenger car market.

This project is part of a broader effort to create – also using existing stations – a hydrogen highway that spans Northern Europe, from Scotland to the Scandinavian countries and including England, Belgium and Germany.

Hydrogen is a clean energy carrier. Used in the fuel cell, hydrogen combines with oxygen from the air to produce electricity, with water as the only byproduct.