The Higgs project developed by the Aragon Hydrogen Foundation leads the development of research for the transport of this technology. We are expanding our contacts with the United States, a key country in the development of hydrogen-related projects.
The Vice President and Minister of Industry, Competitiveness and Business Development of the Government of Aragon, Arturo Aliaga, has held a meeting at the headquarters of the Aragon Hydrogen Foundation, which he also chairs, accompanied by the managing director of the entity, Fernando Palacín, with the Founder and CEO of H2 Clipper, Rinaldo Brutoco, and with the member of the company’s Advisory Board and professor at Florida International University, Jerry B. Brown. The meeting served to learn about the Californian company’s projects and to sign a document of collaboration in the field of knowledge between H2 Clipper and the Foundation.
Aliaga explained that “this agreement will serve to analyse the costs of transporting hydrogen and to study the capabilities of injecting this technology into gas pipeline networks, adding another pipeline to transport hydrogen. It has been demonstrated that this energy vector is taking on a position of pre-eminence. Once again, we are projecting the Foundation, which is already in a privileged position, as a benchmark in research. We are taking another leap forward and exchanging applied research in forums at the highest world level. We produce and know how to use green hydrogen and now we have to assess and study how to transport it”.
The head of the H2 Clipper company, Rinaldo Brutoco, explained that they discovered the HIggis project for injecting hydrogen into the gas networks being developed by the Hydrogen Foundation and saw that it could be a good method of transport for their projects. They have described this project as the benchmark that has opened the way to the hydrogen revolution. Their priority objective is transport, with which they share the common goal of changing the gas infrastructure from gas to hydrogen.
In this sense, Aliaga stressed that “in Aragon we are not limiting ourselves. We are in a project for the future, we have the capacity to produce green hydrogen and we have demonstrated it here. We want to continue to be leaders in the transition to low-carbon energy”.
This is the case of H2 Clipper, a Californian company founded in 2011 that has patented solutions for the efficient aerial transport of green hydrogen over long distances and at low cost through the use of airships. These aerostats, which also use green hydrogen to propel themselves using energy from their fuel cells, will be capable of transporting large volumes of hydrogen over distances of more than 9,000 kilometres, at a speed of about 280 kilometres per hour, at an estimated cost four times lower than conventional air travel and without relying on airports or air infrastructures, because they can land and take off almost anywhere vertically. All this makes them a virtual aerial gas pipeline of great proportions, also ideal for isolated, underdeveloped areas or areas that have suffered natural or other disasters that have reduced or eliminated their equipment.
The company, which is also working on systems for transporting hydrogen using existing gas networks, is seeking support to introduce its technology into the market and integrate it into the entire hydrogen value chain, for which contact with the Aragon Hydrogen Foundation, which has two decades of knowledge and national and international leadership in this field, is a determining factor.
