Fabrice Billard, CEO, Burckhardt Compression Following a Master of Science at the Ecole Centrale in Paris, France, and a year in the Netherlands, Fabrice Billard started his career in 1994 with the Hay Group and the Boston Consulting Group (1999 – 2004). He then went on to join Sulzer, where he held various positions in Switzerland and Singapore at Sulzer Pumps Services, at Sulzer Chemtech as Head of the Mass Transfer Technology Business Unit, and as Chief Strategy Officer of the company. Fabrice joined Burckhardt Compression as President of the Systems Division in 2016, and has been CEO of the company since 1 April 2022.
Hydrogen offers huge potential for car and truck mobility nowadays. What prospects does it provide specifically, and what are the main persisting challenges and technological obstacles? While hydrogen is indeed used in the industry, energy and transport sectors, mobility is the main application at present. Hydrogen-powered cars and dedicated gas stations have been available for several years now. While the technical feasibility of vehicles is irrefutably clear, we’re now faced with new challenges, including: yy Cutting the cost per kg of hydrogen at the pump by a factor of approximately three, so that hydrogen as a product is as competitive as diesel or gasoline. yy Increasing the reliability and durability of all gas station components, including the dispenser and compressor. yy Changing the scale to make gas stations capable of delivering several tons of hydrogen daily in order to fuel a growing number of cars, not to mention the trucks that have only more recently become available on the market and offer a promising alternative to electric battery-powered trucks.
More specifically, the change in scale requires technological developments in the field of compressors: the challenge involves developing compressors with flow rates that are 10 times higher than current solutions, for pressures ranging from 500 to 900 bar. This is a huge task as the sensitivity of the vehicles’ fuel cells means the hydrogen must not be polluted with compressor lubricants. Two stand-out technological opportunities are currently being combined to remove this obstacle: yy Using industrial piston compressors to enable this scaling up at a competitive cost and with greater reliability
yy Developing high-pressure, lubricant-free sealing systems by combining existing technologies and new materials.
How is Burckhardt Compression positioning itself in this context? What solutions are you providing to the various stakeholders to address these challenges?
We’ve been compressing hydrogen at several hundred bars in industrial applications for 50 years and in (lubricant-free) mobility applications for over 20 years. We’ve got all the technological building blocks and a range of products to support hydrogen development for mobility, as well as for industry, green ammonia production or energy. We are producing, assembling and testing our compressors on all the major hydrogen markets: Europe, China, the US and South Korea. Beyond the compressors field, we’re leveraging our skills to design complete systems that take our customers’ constraints and parameters into account, allowing us to optimise overall project costs.
Compression is an important link in the hydrogen production chain. At what level can you intervene in this context?
There are many applications that require compression solutions upstream of gas stations. The hydrogen may come from a hydrogen production and liquefaction plant. High-capacity compressors are needed to liquefy this hydrogen. Hydrogen stored in liquid form generates evaporation gas that has to be recompressed constantly. While hydrogen is indeed produced by renewables and electrolysers, it also needs to be compressed for transport in pipelines or trucks. If hydrogen is to be transported over long
Spring 2022
GlobalHydrogenReview.com
67
