The hydrogen refuelling plant in Madrid

In 2003, the first hydrogen filling station with hydrogen on-site production was built in Madrid. The companies Air Liquide Spain (AL), Gas Natural and Repsol YPF joined forces and established a consortium, esH2esH2, to design and build such a station to supply hydrogen to Madrid's local bus operator (EMT) for the exploitation of a small fleet of electric buses propelled by fuel cells.Natural gas steam reforming was chosen as the most adequate technology for the hydrogen supply, since it is a well-known process in large-scale plants. The challenge was to reach a compact, trustworthy and fully automated system. To allow for an operation free of starts and stops, the production plant was designed with a smaller capacity than the maximum hydrogen required by the four buses. The system was designed such that AL would truck in from an external source the supplementary hydrogen needed. The filling station also allows to truck out hydrogen in case of over production.This paper tries to show the results of two years of operation, the problems encountered and the solutions found.