Project Summary

HyGOH2 will involve the planning, development, and testing of the first hybrid hydrogen/diesel powered mobile ground power unit (GPU) in a live operational airport environment. This will involve retrofitting an existing diesel-powered GPU unit with hydrogen dual-fuel ‘H2ICED’ technology, which will enable it to run on a mixture of diesel and hydrogen power. The project will demonstrate the potential of dual-fuel hydrogen technology to help reduce ground-operations carbon emissions in the near term in a safe and commercially efficient manner.

Project Achievements

An assessment was completed, analysing and preparing for the conversion. An inlet adapter was designed and manufactured to allow the injection of hydrogen in the air inlet. Sensors were installed in the system to monitor both engine speed and load, this dictates the amount of hydrogen that can be injected at any one point. A wiring harness was designed and fit to the machine. Next, a calibration exercise was performed to ensure the correct control and injection of hydrogen when the GPU is running. Alongside the physical installation, risk assessment analyses were conducted to ensure the demonstration will be completed safely.

Conclusions

The dual fuel system installation resulted in a large carbon savings during use. Its typical output is 30kW and during that loading, the addition of the hydrogen system resulted in a diesel saving of 4.6L per hour (equivalent to 11.5kg CO2e). Due to the high use of this type of equipment it was evident that the inclusion of this technology could result in large carbon savings across the industry. The ease of use of the system and its minimal impact had positive feedback and the realisation of the inherent safety aspects of the hydrogen components meant that it was well accepted.

Next Steps

Although the project allowed us to prove the feasibility of using hydrogen technologies in ground support equipment today, there are still many improvements that can be made. Carefully selecting which vehicle/machine will allow easier and more efficient system integration. Simply because the GPU used in the project didn’t have an ECU made the conversion more difficult and reduced the amount of hydrogen that could be injected, reducing the opportunity to save on CO 2 emissions. A live demonstration is still yet to be completed, this was due to the various additional unexpected steps required to complete a live airside hydrogen demonstration, however the project partners will continue to ensure that this live demonstration takes place and in fact, the additional time will give us more options to increase the size of the demonstration and include more hydrogen powered equipment and vehicles.