EU-funded project COSMHYC XL: Efficient Hydrogen compression for Large Scale Mobility Applications

Hydrogen mobility contributes to the energy transition by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks to the long range and the short refueling time of fuel-cell vehicles, hydrogen is of high interest especially for large-scale mobility applications, such as heavy-duty vehicles or large-scale fleets of light duty vehicles with a high utilisation rate, such as taxis.

A critical point in the transition from fossil fuels to low-emission hydrogen is the refueling infrastructure. Challenges related to costs reductions and scale-up for providing high hydrogen flow rates still have to be met.

The EU-funded project COSMHYC has achieved significant progress in the development of an optimised hydrogen compression solution. The follower project COSMHYC XL will build on this innovative compression concept and develop the process for large-scale mobility applications to be able to refuel several vehicles in a short period of time, with large quantities of fuel.

The COSMHYC XL project started in January 2019 and will end in December 2021. Under the coordination of EIFER (DE) the consortium will develop a novel compression solution for high-performance hydrogen filling stations based on two existing compression technologies: Metal hydride compression and mechanical compression. Specific combinations of these two technologies enable to increase the capacity, flow rate and reliability of the hydrogen filling stations. In order to maximise the benefits of the project, the developed process will be modular and scalable enabling to refuel a wide range of vehicle types.

COSMHYC XL with an overall budget of 2.7 M€ is funded by the European Commission in the scope of its Fuel Cell and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking and public private partnership (FCH 2 JU), which is part of Horizon 2020. It is coordinated by the European Institute For Energy Research (EIFER) Karlsruhe, in cooperation with four partners. Steinbeis 2i GmbH supports the project management and implements the project communication activities, including the dissemination and exploitation of results.

COSMHYC and COSMHYC XL are coordinated by the European Institute For Energy Research (EIFER) in Karlsruhe, in cooperation with four other partners from France (MAHYTEC SARL ), Denmark (NEL HYDROGEN AS ) and Germany (Ludwig-Boelkow-Systemtechnik GmbH, Steinbeis 2i GmbH).