Mobile Hydrogen Refueling Station: A Case Study of H2E-Mobility on Ouessant Island

In order to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, alternative energy production and storage methods are being actively pursued. Hydrogen, as an energy carrier, has been studied extensively for its applications to achieve this objective. This paper presents a case study for hydrogen generation and storage, and its further application in hydrogen-based local emobility on an island named Ouessant in France. Since hydrogen-based mobility has been the focus of latest research, the study in this paper proposes a first of its kind mobile hydrogen refueling station in France. The mobile refueling station comprises of several novel technologies, where the anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolyser results in a more stable and reliable performance. Moreover, it suffers from lower degradation as compared to alkaline based electrolysers. Accordingly, the proposed mobile hydrogen station is highly versatile and can be adapted to operate on various renewable energy resources to ensure reduced dependence on fossil fuel-based systems. The refuelling station uses novel electrochemical compression methods to compress hydrogen to very high pressures. Due to compression being electrochemical, as opposed to mechanical, there is less wear and tear in the system which ensures long lifetime of the equipment, which also results in lower energy consumption for compression. The initial results show that such system is highly suitable for remote applications where other forms of hydrogen production and supply are not suitable.