How to: hydrogen refuelling for road vehicles
From a customer perspective, fuelling hydrogen with a vehicle is quite similar to fuelling petrol or diesel. The refuelling process consists of:
- Driving up next to the dispenser;
- Connect the filling nozzle to the vehicle;
- Release the dispenser via the payment terminal;
- Start the filling process by pressing the button on the dispenser;
- Wait until the tank is full and the filling session is automatically completed, or manually abort the filling process via a push button;
- Disconnect the filling nozzle and leave.
The above filling process is identical for various vehicle types: passenger cars, vans, trucks and tractors. Altogether, the filling process takes about half a minute per kg of hydrogen.
- This means that for a passenger car with an empty tank, refuelling takes ~3 minutes. With that amount, another 450-650 km can be driven depending on the tank size.
- For trucks, it takes about 20 minutes, similar to conventional diesel refuelling. For trucks and buses, high(er)-flow hydrogen dispensers are also under development.
Just as conventional vehicles, hydrogen vehicles have an ISO standardised filler nozzle and the refuelling nipples fit universally. This means that every hydrogen vehicle is equipped with the same connection. Every filling station has the same type of filling connection. Any hydrogen vehicle can therefore fuel at any hydrogen filling station - anywhere in the world.
A difference from fuelling fossil fuels is that with hydrogen vehicles, the filling nozzle snaps on and seals leak tight to the vehicle's connection. Filling must be started on the dispenser (usually a green push button), after which the filling process is automatic. No further actions are required by the user in this process. The filling session continues automatically until the vehicle is full or the user cancels the filling session before completion (usually a red push button). After this, the user can disconnect the filling nozzle from the vehicle.
Furthermore, hydrogen refuelling can be done hands-free, as you can see below.
