The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) announced on Thursday that they have installed the nation’s first hydrogen fuelling station for fuel cell cars at their research campus in Dübendorf, canton Zurich.
The new pump will be used by experimental vehicles and privately owned hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and closely precedes the unveiling of Switzerland’s first public hydrogen filling station, which will open in early November. That site is being launched through a cooperation between companies Coop and H2 Energy AG.
This facility is specially designed to fill the compact reservoirs of passenger vehicles quickly, EMPA said in a statement on Thursday. EMPA’s new pump can deliver hydrogen at a pressure of 700 bars, which means it is possible to fill a hydrogen fuel cell car in two to three minutes. EMPA already has a station designed to fill large utility vehicles with hydrogen, but it is not adapted for cars and only operates at a pressure of 350 bars.
EMPA says that its goal with this initiative is to gather experience with hydrogen as fuel, and it is targeting in particular the 20% of cars in Switzerland that travel over 20,000 kilometres (12,427 miles) per year. These are, in effect, responsible for about half of all kilometres travelled.
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