Air Liquide welcomes EODev's GEH2® to supply back-up power

Air Liquide, one of the world leaders in the production and distribution of hydrogen, seized the opportunity to avoid the use of a polluting diesel generator for emergency power back-up by installing EODev's GEH2® at its Loges-en-Josas site dedicated to the group's R&D. An application bound to become widespread.

The use of GEH2® electro-hydrogen power generators is now increasingly common for "prime power" applications, for example on construction sites or to provide electricity for large-scale public events when power from "the grid" is not sufficient, or when there is simply no grid. However, its use as an emergency source of electricity to compensate for power cuts on "the grid", as a back-up solution, is not (yet) very widespread — even if tests have already been carried out on some sensitive sites such as hospitals and data centers.

The Air Liquide site at Les Loges-en-Josas houses five buildings for the group's Research and Development teams. As such, it is crucial that the installations do not suffer from any power cuts. The GEH2® that has been installed is thus configured to take over in the event of interruption in power supply. It works in tandem with a UPS which gets first into action, while the GEH2® gets started — in less than a minute. The electro-hydrogen power generator is then supplied with hydrogen from hydrogen racks stored in high-pressure canisters via a pressure regulation module. The whole set-up is automated and can instantly deliver 50kW of power.

The inauguration of the installation took place on March 28th in the presence of Jérémie Lagarrigue, EODev's CEO, and many Air Liquide managers more accustomed to manufacturing the molecule than to seeing it in action. They were thus able to discover in detail how the GEH2® operates, and appreciated the absence of harmful emissions, smoke and noise from our power generator — which only emits water, as explained in the video available below.