Air Liquide Japan (President: Shiro Yahara) completed Saga H2 Station which has been under construction in Saga and held an opening ceremony on March 27.

The station is the first one in Saga Prefecture that has shown a model of the suburban-type H2 infrastructure for the cities outside the metropolitan areas.

To meet the smaller suburban demand in scale than that in the urban area, the H2 filling capacity is designed to be 100 Nm3/h (to fill 2 FCVs in succession per hour) which is 1/3 of the urban station. The design is aimed for the lowest necessary capacity to be utilized first as a filling base for the FCV users in their long-distance driving.

The site has an area of 1200m2, The design foresees an expected expansion including the addition of dispensers to meet a probable growth in demand.

Hydrogen is supplied in curdles delivered from ALJ’s hydrogen plant in Minamata City. 6 curdles can be installed to fill about 20 kg of hydrogen. The compressor is made by Hydro-Pac, the pressure accumulator of typeⅡ by Japan Steel Works and the dispenser by Hitachi Automotive Systems Measurement.

The H2 station is managed by ALJ itself alone for the first time. As ALJ has already been operating a hydrogen station at 2 locations in collaboration with Toyota Tsusho in Aichi Prefecture, it is the 3 location for commercial purposes and the 7th case including those for verification purposes.