New Bus ReFuelling for European Hydrogen Bus Depots - High-Level Techno Economic Project Summary Report

The NewBusFuel (finnced by the FCH-JU)  aimed to fill a major gap in the existing knowledge base around the refuelling of hydrogen at a bus depot scale.

Existing hydrogen refuelling stations (HRS) have been designed and operated with maximum fuelling capacities in the 100s of kg/day supplying up to 15 buses. For hydrogen to be a viable fuel for bus operators in the medium term, solutions are required which can provide fuel for 100’s of buses. This implies fuelling requirements of 1,500 kg/day and above. Providing fuel at this scale creates new challenges which have only been tackled theoretically by the hydrogen industry. Until now there is a considerable knowledge gap around the designs, processes and safety implications of providing hydrogen refuelling on this scale. A large pan-European consortium has assembled to develop solutions to these challenges. The consortium carried out engineering studies for 13 different large scale hydrogen fuelling station designs at 12 different sites in seven European countries.

This report describes the HRS solutions developed, it presents the key insights, summarises the most important lessons learned and provides recommendations.