| TOKYO--Japan's
Hitachi Industries Co. has developed a high-performance compressor for
service stations that supply hydrogen gas to fuel cell vehicles. The company
plans to test the machine at stations in Japan with the goal of having
a practical version ready in fiscal 2007.
The compressor works to transfer
hydrogen from the delivery truck to the on-site storage tank. Compared
to other compressors, the new machine from Hitachi Industries is more efficient
at removing hydrogen from the truck tank, and it then compresses the gas
to 100 megapascals before transferring the hydrogen to the storage tank.
The delivery truck that brings hydrogen
gas to the filling station carries hydrogen gas compressed to 20 megapascals.
Usually only around half of this gas can be removed from the truck tank,
but the new compressor can extract virtually all of the hydrogen because
it lowers its pressure to just 0.6 megapascal when drawing gas from the
tank.
Also, because the compressor compresses
the hydrogen to 100 megapascals with five rounds of compression, fuel-cell
cars that fill up at the station can fill with more hydrogen.

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