Carburos Metálicos, a leading company in the industrial and medical gases sector in Spain that is part of the Air Products group, has installed a laboratory in La Pobla de Mafumet (Tarragona) that allows the quality of the H₂ used to feed fuel cells to be analyzed. fuel, oriented mainly to the mobility of electric H₂ vehicles.

In this sense, the H₂ used in fuel cells must comply with the ISO 14687, EN 17124 and ISO 21087 standards and therefore it is necessary to apply periodic analytical methods that guarantee the quality and safety of this product. After months of testing, the Carburos Metálicos laboratory and quality control team has selected the analyzers that are part of this system and its procedures to meet the high standards of the H₂ fuel cell specifications.

This laboratory, operational since the end of February, is the first within the Air Products group in Europe to carry out the analysis required by any subsidiary of the group and is also open to other companies that require H₂ analysis.

This H₂ analysis laboratory for mobility and fuel cells will be key to improving the safety and efficiency of fuel cells intended to power all types of vehicles. With this own laboratory, the company will be able to carry out analyses more quickly and at a better cost, helping to promote the development of H₂ technology in Europe by bringing analysis capacity closer to demand.

Carburos Metálicos currently leads the development of the new mobility with H₂ in Spain, since it has the necessary capacities to produce it, distribute it and take it to the vehicle depot through its own H₂ generators. To demonstrate this, Carburos Metálicos carries out real use tests with its H₂ Route, which since 2021 has already visited nearly 20 locations, including: Oviedo, Bilbao, Tarragona, Valladolid, Zaragoza and Córdoba, A Coruña, Toledo, Malaga, Valencia, Bizkaia and Cantabria.

The supply to the first urban bus line in Spain powered by renewable H₂, in operation in Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid) since last year, also has the technology developed by Carburos Metálicos with one of its H₂ generators. Likewise, the company has announced the construction of the first public H₂ generation in Tarragona throughout 2023.

Air Products is part of the world's largest H₂ producer, the Air Products Group, which has participated in more than 250 H₂ service station projects in twenty countries since 1993. It also has the world's largest channeled H₂ distribution network and a wide portfolio of patents related to its refueling, so it is present throughout its entire value chain. Today, Air Products refueling technologies provide more than 1.5 MMtpy of H₂ refills.

“Green H₂ is strategic to achieve the objectives of the energy transition and Carburos Metálicos, as a company of the Air Products group, a world leader in the production and distribution of this gas, wants to put all its knowledge, technology and experience in H₂ to contribute to the necessary process of decarbonization of complex sectors such as certain types of transport and industrial processes that will require the use of H₂. For this reason, this innovative laboratory is key, as it allows the quality of H₂ to be analyzed to facilitate its perfect functioning in devices as precise as H₂-fed fuel cells,” said Miquel Lope, General Director of Carburos Metálicos.