Fuel cell cars powered by hydrogen are considered an environmentally friendly alternative to vehicles with combustion engines. As a technology of the future, hydrogen (H₂) plays a central role in the transition to renewable energies. For the first time, a car was refueled at THM with green hydrogen produced on campus.
An engineer from the English company "FuelCell Systems Ltd." commissioned the new hydrogen dispenser at the THM technical center on Philosophenhöhe. Roth Holding – operator of the hydrogen filling station in Giessen – provided a Toyota Mirai II for the test runs. The vehicle is one of twelve hydrogen cars available for use in a car-sharing system.
As part of the commissioning process, the engineer conducted comprehensive safety checks, leak tests, and adjustments to the dispenser to ensure reliable and safe refueling of vehicles. To achieve this, the engineer worked closely with engineers in the UK via a remote maintenance connection to verify all parameters, such as the sensors and protective functions.
“The hydrogen storage unit can hold up to 80 kilograms of hydrogen – that’s equivalent to about 15 full tanks of a Toyota Mirai,” explained Simon Konradi, engineer at the Centre of Competence for Energy Technology and Energy Management (etem.THM). This provides sufficient reserves for research, teaching, and further demonstrations.
The successful refueling confirmed the functionality of the entire process chain on campus: from the production of hydrogen from renewable electricity to its storage and finally its delivery to the fuel cell vehicle via the dispenser. In the future, the facility will serve as an open real-world laboratory for teaching events, measurement campaigns, and knowledge transfer in Central Hesse.
TheTHM Technical University of Central Hesse) is working on the HyFuel Campus Central Hesse research project to explore and implement long-term energy storage using electricity-based hydrogen technology under real-world conditions. The project is being carried out at the Energy Storage and Sector Coupling (FES) research center on Georg-Elser-Straße, where THM operates a high-temperature storage system to utilize surplus energy from the solar panels of the surrounding buildings. The system consists of electrolyzers for hydrogen production, a high-pressure storage tank, and fuel cells for reconversion into electricity. A hydrogen refueling station is now also part of the system.