Volkswagen recently unveiled their new solar hydrogen fueling station. It is located at the Volkswagen Technology Center in the State of Lower Saxony in Germany. The station was designed and bult in collaboration with the German solar energy firm Solvis.

“I very much welcome the launching of this solar-hydrogen filling station and the advent of the hydrogen age here in Lower Saxony which this launch represents,” commented Lower Saxony Environment Minister Hans-Heinrich Sander.

The plant will produce hydrogen alongside "SunFuel" which is a synthetic diesel fuel produced from biomass. The Sun Fuel site above has a virtual lab in which you can plant your own seed and watch it grow and eventually be turned into fuel.

” This facility will enable a share of the fuel needed to run the fuel-cell vehicles and test beds developed there to be produced on location using energy from sunlight. “Viewed over the long term,” says Hartmut Märtens, head of fuel-cell development at Volkswagen, “hydrogen-powered fuel-cell drive will offer the greatest amount of potential for greenhouse-gas reduction – especially if such hydrogen is produced by way of a regenerative solution with the help of solar or wind energy. So we are paving the way for the future.”

The hydrogen produced at this facillity will come from water. The site will use solar panels with a surface area of 50 square metres to generate the electricity that is necessary to release the hydrogen from the water. This release will be accomplished by a process known as Electrolysis in which an electric current is passed through the water with the result that the water is split into it's constituent elements of hydrogen and oxygen gasses.

Image of Solar Panelsfrom the Solvis site.

The hydrogen produced is then "scrubbed" to achieve a high level of purity and then compressed to 400 bar in a storage tank where it waits to be pumped into vehicle's fuel tanks. The system can produce 25 cu/ft of hydrogen a day which is roughly enough to power a vehicle for 200km. Engineers hope to increase the amount of hydrogen that can be stored on board a vehicle and thereby extend it's operating range. "Hydrogen production and storage are two critical elements along the road to achieving the long-term goal of providing customers emission-neutralised vehicles at standard market prices" .