Analysis of Hydrogen Demand and Refueling Infrastructure in the Road Transportation Sector in Europe

It is widely recognized that hydrogen can play an important role in the decarbonization of sectors where emissions are hard to abate such as the mobility sector. The widespread use of hydrogen-based mobility technologies requires the development of hydrogen distribution infrastructures, the scale-up of which is crucial for planning their distribution across an area. In this context, the goal of this study is to evaluate the current European refueling infrastructure and its ability to meet the increasing hydrogen mobility demand, as well as to provide a preliminary design of small, medium, and large-size hydrogen refueling stations (HRSs) basing on estimates of daily demands of hydrogen passenger cars. Starting from the total number of registered hydrogen passenger cars in Europe in 2022 and taking into account the extension of the European Central Road, the number of HRSs (related to different sizes), needed to refuel the road-going vehicles, is evaluated. For a more comprehensive analysis, results are compared with the current European infrastructure of HRSs. To accomplish this, the HRSs size, for each considered scenario, is designed according to a cascade storage system, considering the refueling of cars with a tank capacity of 5 kgH2 at 700 bar and assuming a working time of 6 h/day per HRS.