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Feb 29, 2024

Hydrogen Engines and Boilers: Bosch Aims to Revolutionize Its Business by 2030

Hydrogen engines and boilers: Bosch aims to revolutionize its business by 2030 | Companies. The hydrogen age. With planned investments of almost 2,500 million euros in the development and manufacture

Hydrogen engines and boilers: Bosch aims to revolutionize its business by 2030 | Companies.

The hydrogen age. With planned investments of almost 2,500 million euros in the development and manufacture of its related technologies, the Bosch group is convinced that its commitment will generate sales for double this amount by 2030.

The proposals, among which are the fuel cells and the hydrogen engine for heavy transport, are concentrated in the mobility solutions sector, which in Spain represents around half of the company’s business. In the country, it also participates in the consortium promoted by Repsol to promote this fuel.

The investments announced by Stefan Hartung, Bosch’s chairman of the board of directors, are concentrated in its German sites, as well as two other plants in China. However, the proposed transformation also affects Spain directly.

The German manufacturer aims to be part of the entire value chain of this energy vector, which also includes technology for the production of hydrogen through the electrolysis cell, a central element of an electrolyser, which it hopes to have on the market from 2025. The expectation is that the demand for hydrogen will skyrocket by 510% in the Old Continent by 2030, compared to the previous decade.

At the local level, the group’s perspective is to strengthen its hydrogen business through projects and collaborations in the SHYNE consortium, where in addition to Repsol, Alsa, CELSA Group, Enagás, Scania and Talgo participate as promoter partners. Together with these firms, Bosch hopes to integrate its generation technologies in a country with strong potential for the production of this energy vector, although the firm points out that the market is still in a “latent” state.

The market value of electrolyzer systems will reach 26,000 million globally by 2030 and will be concentrated in places where renewable energy is cheaper, for which Spain is particularly relevant. The consolidation of the hydrogen market would allow a significant jump in the local turnover of Bosch, which in 2022 reached 2,482 million euros only in Spain.

Similarly, the company already offers boilers for its industrial customers capable of initially running on natural gas and later converting to hydrogen when home infrastructure becomes available. In as little as an hour, installers could convert the appliances with just one burner change.

However, the future for both the production and use of hydrogen in Europe is still fragile, they say from the company.

Stefan Hartung, Bosch’s chairman of the board of directors, said at an event with journalists:

Europe has great ambitions, but we see worrying contradictions between ideals and reality.

The message for Brussels has been clear, something strange for a German company: “The United States is showing us how it should be done”, in reference to the green aid package approved last year by Washington.

The company, with 137 years in the market, makes it clear that the commitment to hydrogen should be transversal and rules out other alternatives with which the rest of the industry flirts. “Purely electric solutions face their own limits,” Hartung stressed. For example, they mention that heat pumps lose meaning the older the buildings are. The same with heavy vehicles, where a battery-based solution is considered inefficient.

The expectation is high: Bosch expects that one in five new heavy trucks will be powered by fuel cells. This technology, where hydrogen reacts with oxygen to produce electricity and water, is already being mass-produced by the company both in China and in Germany, in one of the factories where diesel engines were formerly developed.

These trucks would allow, with a load of 70 kilos of hydrogen, to travel up to 800 kilometers without refueling and with a delay of only 20 minutes in refueling. The highlight is that this solution could also be applied to heavy vehicles already on the road, as it can be integrated into existing units.

PEM fuel cell that allows driving heavy trucks.Bosch

The interest of the manufacturers seems clear. Nikola, the American promise of green trucks, will be the main customer for the hydrogen modules produced by Bosch. The models with this technology will be launched in a few months, in the third quarter of 2023. As for the European companies, Daimler and Stellantis are also advancing in developments based on this technology.

At the same time, and while the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles faces obstacles in Spain and in a large part of Europe, the German manufacturer seeks to develop solutions for refueling hydrogen.

The challenge of this technology is the compression of the gas, which Bosch seeks to simplify through a specific solution that can work in service stations, storage tanks and pipelines. The firm’s engineers point out that this could halve the total cost compared to currently available alternatives.

In the field of cars, tests are also being carried out to directly bring hydrogen to passenger cars. The proposed solution is made up of steel cylinders that could be placed under the ground, a space normally occupied by batteries in an electric car.

READ the latest news shaping the hydrogen market at Hydrogen Central

Hydrogen engines and boilers: Bosch aims to revolutionize its business by 2030 | Companies, July 31, 2023