As the National Hydrogen Road Tour rolled through Rolla, Missouri, the first hydrogen filling station in the state was opened. The station - located at the Missouri University of Science and Technology's E³ (E-cubed) Commons - will be supplied with compressed gaseous hydrogen by Linde North America. The University is working with several government agencies and the Gas Technology Institute to research hydrogen as a transportation fuel. Linde also supplies liquid hydrogen for the fleet of BMW Hydrogen 7s. Linde and the Gas Technology Institute are collaborating on work to commercialize hydrogen distribution.

[Source: Linde]

European commercial gas supplier Linde will conduct hydrogen fueling demonstrations at the Frankfurt Motor Show next month. The company will have their traiLH2TM mobile hydrogen fueling station situated outside the show hall. On September 11, they will do two demonstrations, one using compressed hydrogen gas for a Mercedes Benz F-Cell and another with liquid hydrogen for a BMW Hydrogen 7. On the 12th, they will do another compressed gas filling demo with the Mercedes.

[Source: Linde]

Wolfgang Reitzle, chief executive officer of Linde, told a group of automotive engineers at a conference in Germany that he believes there will be at least 6 million hydrogen-powered cars in Europe by 2020. Right now he estimates there are roughly 500 hydrogen vehicles on the world's roads, yet remember the refueling infrastructure is currently minimal. Still, he's confident in his prediction and says, "this is a conservative estimate."

The motivation for his speech is fairly evident as Reuters describes his company as the world's largest industrial gases group. Last Monday, Linde inaugurated a new hydrogen center with a filling station, technology test center and training center near Munich at a cost of about E3 million (about $3.75 million).

As Reitzle urged politicians to be more active in long-term planning with hydrogen, he estimated that it would cost about $4 billion to build a hydrogen infrastructure of 2,800 filling stations in Europe, but that the high oil prices would eventually offset the cost. He said, "It would be a shame if Germany were to sleep through a trend in hydrogen technology the way we slept through hybrids."

The article also notes that the company is researching ways to produce hydrogen from regenerative sources through biomass conversion instead using fossil fuels.

[Source: Reuters via MSNBC]