Hydrogenics Corporation has announced that it, together with eight other partners, has won a major energy storage R&D and demonstration project in Europe. Called 'Don Quichote', the project includes a financial contribution of 2.86 million Euros by the European Commission, under the auspices of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU), and will take five years to complete.
The core innovation of the Don Quichote project will consist of combining a 350 bar electrochemical compressor, a 30 Nm3 PEM electrolyzer system, and a 90 kW fuel cell system to demonstrate the technical and economical viability of an integrated hydrogen storage system for renewable electricity linked to a hydrogen refuelling facility. The consortium will design, build, deploy and operate the system at the Colruyt site near Brussels to double the capacity of the existing 350 bar fueling station to 130 kilograms per day and install a fuel cell system for electricity demand leveling.
This project seeks to increase renewable-based electricity, grid balancing, sustainable mobility and the use of clean hydrogen. It aims to demonstrate and validate system-level technology readiness while maintaining a high safety level and generate further data for the expansion of renewable electricity and hydrogen-fuelled, sustainable mobility.
Consortium members include the leading grocery chain Colruyt Group (Belgium); the European Commission's Directorate — General Joint Research Centre (Belgium); the European Hydrogen Association (EHA), represented through FAST; HyET Hydrogen Efficiency Technologies, the pioneer in electrochemical compression (the Netherlands); Iceland New Energy, which is investigating the potential for eventually replacing the use of fossil fuels in Iceland with hydrogen-based fuels and create the world's first hydrogen economy; PE INTERNATIONAL, an international strategic consulting, software solutions and services company in the field of sustainability (Germany); TUV Rheinland Group, a leading safety & security assessment and regulatory agency (Germany); and WaterstofNet (Belgium), which is developing major hydrogen projects in the region of Flanders and South of the Netherlands.
