Lifting the Barriers
to Refueling

When it comes to future mobil­i­ty, Jens Sprotte is fully com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing the cli­mate and con­serv­ing resources. A man fizzing with ener­gy, Sprotte is the senior man­ag­er respon­si­ble for the hydro­gen-pow­ered Cora­dia iLint local trans­port train at the Ger­man sub­sidiary of the French train man­u­fac­tur­er Alstom. If the author­i­ties let the Vice Pres­i­dent for Mar­ket­ing & Strat­e­gy have his way, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly hydro­gen-pow­ered trains could play an impor­tant role even soon­er. This would be par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful in region­al pub­lic trans­port, which is char­ac­ter­ized by rel­a­tive­ly short dis­tances and fre­quent stops, and where there are many lines that at present can only be oper­at­ed with diesel loco­mo­tives due to the lack of over­head elec­tric lines. The Alstom Group is already show­ing how a dif­fer­ent track is pos­si­ble in the north­ern Ger­man state of Lower Sax­ony, where the Cora­dia iLint runs on a reg­u­lar ser­vice in the North Sea coastal region around Cux­haven. In sum­mer 2023 the train will also be tri­alled in Cana­da, tak­ing pas­sen­gers along the St. Lawrence River on the Charlevoix Rail­way. The green hydro­gen will be sup­plied by a Harnois Éner­gies plant in Que­bec City. With the results of this project, Alstom aims to be bet­ter able to assess the devel­op­ment of hydro­gen tech­nol­o­gy in the North Amer­i­can market.

Alstom was the first man­u­fac­tur­er to estab­lish the new sys­tem with fuel cells from Cana­da in reg­u­lar oper­a­tion. These cells gen­er­ate elec­tri­cal ener­gy from hydro­gen and oxy­gen, and the cur­rent to drive the train is stored in what are known as trac­tion bat­ter­ies. The ener­gy gen­er­at­ed dur­ing brak­ing also flows direct­ly into the bat­ter­ies for stor­age. This reduces hydro­gen con­sump­tion and increas­es the range.

For hydro­gen trains to make their way onto many more routes, Sprotte needs a lot more atten­tion. He’s get­ting involved in this with sport­ing zest, and even orga­nized a world record. He reserved a spe­cial slot for his Cora­dia iLint on the very busy Deutsche Bahn rail net­work, invit­ed TV crews and news­pa­per edi­tors to sta­tions in every Ger­man state along the route, and sent them on the hydro­gen-pow­ered train from the far north to the south­ern border.

Sprotte orig­i­nal­ly expect­ed his train to cover at least 1,000 kilo­me­ters on just one tank of fuel. The esti­mate was delib­er­ate­ly cau­tious, and in the end there was enough left to go much fur­ther. The jour­ney ended just before the two onboard tanks were com­plete­ly empty—after 1,175 kilo­me­ters and a con­sump­tion of 250 kilo­grams of hydro­gen. That works out to 21.3 kilo­grams of hydro­gen per 100 kilo­me­ters of track.

“Our iLint is so eco­nom­i­cal that it only needs to be refu­eled every two days in typ­i­cal region­al oper­a­tion,” boasts Sprotte. But there’s still one incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing catch. After the world record trip, the Cora­dia iLint was unable to return home under its own power. The shiny new­com­er had to be cou­pled to anoth­er loco­mo­tive. But why? “Because there are hard­ly any suit­able hydro­gen refu­el­ing sta­tions for trains on the line,” says Sprotte. That has to change, and it’s now becom­ing clear that man­u­fac­tur­ers like Alstom will step in for them­selves. “It’s no longer enough for us to put a train on the rails for our cus­tomers. When run­ning them on hydro­gen, we also have to sup­ply them with the infra­struc­ture and oper­ate it. And that begins with the hydro­gen fill­ing stations.”

The infra­struc­ture prob­lem is by no means unique to Alstom. When using hydro­gen, peo­ple all too often think in terms of their own indus­try instead of glob­al sys­tems. Logis­tics, fill­ing sta­tions and effi­cient use through net­works are still in their infan­cy and have been for years. Admit­ted­ly, dif­fer­ent users have dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions. “But the hydro­gen is always the same. And it has to be avail­able to any­one who wants it, direct­ly where it’s need­ed. That’s essen­tial in order to lever­age syn­er­gies and achieve economies of scale,” says Chris­t­ian Dittmer-Peters. As a part­ner at the man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy Porsche Con­sult­ing, he is help­ing Alstom with its envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly rail cam­paign. He is com­mit­ted to build­ing a “multi-user hydro­gen ecosystem.”

On the fac­to­ry tracks of Alstom Trans­port Deutsch­land GmbH in Salzgit­ter in north­ern Ger­many, the new hydro­gen trains roll out of the long pro­duc­tion halls. Since the end of August 2022, these trains have been grad­u­al­ly replac­ing the diesel-pow­ered vehi­cles of the Lower Sax­ony state pub­lic trans­port author­i­ty (LNVG) on sched­uled ser­vices on the local trans­port net­work between Cux­haven, Bre­mer­haven, Bre­mervörde and Bux­te­hude. The fleet for LNVG will com­prise a total of 14 Cora­dia iLint trains. In Bre­mervörde, Linde GmbH, the world mar­ket leader for indus­tri­al gases, built a hydro­gen fill­ing sta­tion for the trains. The best thing is that the gas comes as a waste prod­uct from a chem­i­cal plant in the town of Stade, only 30 kilo­me­ters away. If it were not used as ener­gy in the trains, it would be dis­posed of.

The operator—the local trans­port authority—is extreme­ly sat­is­fied: “By using the hydro­gen trains on reg­u­lar ser­vices, in the past few months we have proven that this inno­v­a­tive form of propul­sion is in no way infe­ri­or to diesel. Quite the oppo­site,” says LNVG Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Car­men Schw­abl. “With the hydro­gen project, we’ve given impe­tus to the devel­op­ment of hydro­gen trains in Ger­many and in order to do even more for the cli­mate, we will no longer buy diesel vehicles.”

And Dr. Math­ias Kranz, Linde’s Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of On-site and Bulk Busi­ness in Ger­many, is excit­ed about a new area of busi­ness: “At Linde, we’ve been com­mit­ted to spread­ing sus­tain­able hydro­gen tech­nolo­gies for more than 30 years. By estab­lish­ing the world’s first hydro­gen fill­ing sta­tion for trains in Bre­mervörde, we have opened up a new mobil­i­ty sec­tor.” The net­work in the north of Ger­many is the world’s first sched­uled pas­sen­ger ser­vice with hydro­gen trains.

Anoth­er net­work, the Rhine-Main trans­port asso­ci­a­tion (RMV) began oper­at­ing 27 hydro­gen trains in Decem­ber 2022. They will take pas­sen­gers from the bank­ing metrop­o­lis of Frank­furt am Main to Bran­dobern­dorf in the Taunus region, a town with a pop­u­la­tion of 2,000. The nec­es­sary hydro­gen fill­ing sta­tion was built in the Frank­furt-Höchst indus­tri­al park by Infra­serv Höchst, the com­pa­ny that oper­ates the indus­tri­al park. RMV Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Prof. Knut Ringat points out proud­ly that this inno­va­tion in the Rhine-Main region is “the largest hydro­gen train fleet in the world.” The RMV trains are not only as quiet as elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered vehi­cles, but they also only emit water vapor dur­ing oper­a­tion. This means they save around 19,000 tons of CO₂ each year. The hydro­gen is pro­duced in the near­by indus­tri­al park—also as a waste prod­uct from chem­i­cal process­es. Ringat also cites pub­lic mobil­i­ty with­out pol­lu­tion as a goal: “In order to achieve this, we will demand envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly propul­sion sys­tems in all our invi­ta­tions to ten­der from 2030,” promis­es the head of the trans­port association.

Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and also in terms of pro­duc­tion process­es, the switch to hydro­gen has long been part of every­day life for man­u­fac­tur­er Alstom. “The essen­tial drive com­po­nents were all fully devel­oped and avail­able on the mar­ket,” says Alstom man­ag­er Sprotte. What’s much more com­pli­cat­ed is some­thing that the cus­tomer expects to have from the day the trains are deliv­ered: “As a man­u­fac­tur­er, we must pro­vide our cus­tomers with an entire ecosys­tem of the nec­es­sary hydro­gen infra­struc­ture so that they can be sure they are buy­ing a high-per­for­mance, long-last­ing means of trans­port,” says Sprotte. Since the project began, he has had vis­i­tors from 35 coun­tries keen to find out more. Other projects in north­ern Italy, France and the Nether­lands are about to start.

Alstom’s task now is to clear exter­nal hur­dles out of the way. Sprotte explains this using the Bre­mervörde project as an exam­ple: “The loca­tion is geo­graph­i­cal­ly favor­able, almost in the mid­dle of the region­al trans­port net­work. If they were allowed to, Alstom and Linde could joint­ly sup­ply sev­er­al sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties with ready-made hydro­gen, for exam­ple for munic­i­pal com­mer­cial vehi­cles. But they can’t, and that’s because pub­lic fund­ing for the project was only grant­ed on the express con­di­tion that the fill­ing sta­tion be used exclu­sive­ly for rail trans­port.” This was met with incom­pre­hen­sion by the part­ners involved.

Sprotte says he is com­mit­ted to get­ting pol­i­cy­mak­ers to move away from a “trans­port only” or “ener­gy only” mind­set. An ener­gy and trans­port rev­o­lu­tion will only suc­ceed if there is joined-up think­ing, in other words, if the hydro­gen and trans­port strate­gies in Ger­many are linked. From an eco­nom­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed point of view, the fill­ing sta­tion would be much more effi­cient if it served more than just trains that come by every day or two to refu­el, and could instead be used by mul­ti­ple trans­porta­tion ser­vices. There is plen­ty of demand—in addi­tion to the fleets oper­at­ed by local author­i­ties, poten­tial ben­e­fi­cia­ries might include sched­uled bus ser­vices, freight for­warders, large agri­cul­tur­al oper­a­tions or par­cel and couri­er services.

The train man­u­fac­tur­er Alstom is con­vinced that hydro­gen propul­sion has a great future, although experts are aware that in rail trans­port, noth­ing tops the effi­cien­cy of elec­tric­i­ty from an over­head line. “But there are impor­tant, very plau­si­ble argu­ments for hydro­gen in many places,” says Sprotte: “The infra­struc­ture for elec­tri­fi­ca­tion is very expen­sive and is bare­ly worth­while for region­al trans­port in rural areas.” Elec­tri­fy­ing a sin­gle-track line costs 1.4 to 3.6 mil­lion euros per kilo­me­ter, depend­ing on the topography—whether flat­lands or hills. These fig­ures were pub­lished by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istryof Trans­port in 2021 accord­ing to cal­cu­la­tions by DB Netz AG, the Deutsche Bahn sub­sidiary respon­si­ble for rail infrastructure.

Hydro­gen has other advan­tages, too. That’s because ide­al­ly, the gas is avail­able as a waste prod­uct. When this is not the case, it is pos­si­ble to use tech­nolo­gies such as wind power, which is some­times gen­er­at­ed in excess and can be con­vert­ed into hydro­gen. This way, cost­ly wind tur­bines would no longer have to be shut down at times when the demand for elec­tric­i­ty is met and there are no cus­tomers for the energy.

In Ger­many, many region­al trains cur­rent­ly on the lines were pur­chased dur­ing a boom short­ly after the turn of the mil­len­ni­um. They have now been in ser­vice for two decades and are about halfway through their life cycle. This includes many of the more than 1,000 LINT diesel trains from Alstom cur­rent­ly oper­at­ing in Germany’s region­al trans­port sys­tem. Their propul­sion sys­tems, as well as those of many shunt­ing loco­mo­tives, could, accord­ing to Sprotte, be con­vert­ed from min­er­al oil to hydro­gen for a “rea­son­able out­lay”. The main thing is to remove the bar­ri­ers to refueling.