Mayor's Delegation visits innovation center to discuss state-of-the-art hydrogen and fuel cell technology
Nowadays one of the biggest challenges of the energy transition is the transport and storage of renewable energies. That is why the delegation of high-level mayors visited the hydrogen center and hydrogen filling station in Herten in the Ruhr area on 12 July to discuss this increasingly important topic. One way to overcome this challenge is to store energy in hydrogen and recover it from fuel cells.
Over the past 135 years, energy has always been a dominant issue in and for Herten: in the past, Herten used to be the largest mining town in Europe. From today’s perspective, Herten has embarked as one of the most important locations for hydrogen and fuel cell technology. It is currently leading the way in the production of “green hydrogen” by wind power electrolysis.
The h2herten Anwender-Zentrum GmbH (h2herten Application Center) operates as one of the most innovative power to gas plants worldwide. Built to establish a platform for research and development of integrated energy supply systems to companies, it offers the opportunity to reproduce the entire cycle of energy conversion. This provides insight on how a 100% renewable energy supply can be achieved in the future. The energy conversion process starts with the electrolyzer. With a maximum load of 160 kW 30 Nm3/h can be produced. Afterwards the hydrogen will be compressed from 10 bar to a pressure of up to 45 bar. With this pressure, a total amount of 470 kg of hydrogen can be stored in the storage tank.