Metacon has through its subsidiary Helbio received CE approval for the first model of the company’s upcoming series of larger hydrogen generators based on the company’s own patented catalytic reforming technology. The HHG systems target the enormous potential that exists in Europe and the world to be able to produce large amounts of green non-fossil hydrogen from biogas locally, independently of the electricity grid. Calculations show that the theoretical potential in Germany alone is that fully developed, HHG systems could supply half of Germany’s car traffic with 100 percent climate-friendly and domestically produced vehicle fuel in the form of green hydrogen.

The market for green hydrogen is growing explosively in line with rapidly increasing insights into the potential for, among other things, the transition of the transport sector and the basic industry, energy storage and the need to find domestic and sustainable ways to increase countries’ energy and fuel independence. The dominant technology today is to split water into oxygen and fossil-free hydrogen to a plethora of different uses from green electricity through so-called electrolysis. This was the reason why Metacon last year built up its own business unit with a strong offering in electrolysis, which has already resulted in several major deals and ongoing projects in Sweden.

While electrolysis is a well-functioning and mature technology for producing green hydrogen, there are also several challenges with this technology. It is based, among other things, on access to large amounts of green electricity, something that is in short supply and not least in large parts of the world outside the Nordic region. Recently, the price of electricity has quickly skyrocketed. Metacon’s reformer technology (HHG) has therefore aimed to supplement the electrolysis range with an alternative and electricity-independent way to produce large amounts of locally produced vehicle fuel or energy storage in the form of non-fossil green hydrogen. The focus area for these compact and modular hydrogen factories is the installed and future base of biogas production in the world, primarily from agricultural waste, food waste, the fishing industry and wastewater treatment plants. In Germany alone, there is a base of over 10.000 biogas plants.

It is in light of the above market opportunities that Metacon has recently focused on quickly obtaining CE approval for the company’s larger reformer systems. The plan is now to continue the development and production preparations for the HHG platform and at the same time develop the portfolio with scaled-up versions with greater capacity. The CE approval of HHG 40 proves that our reformer technology is safe and meets the requirements for approval under EU regulations and paves the way for continued certifications of our other reformer products.

”The CE marking of HHG 40 is an important milestone ahead of the upcoming roll-out of our catalytic reformer-based hydrogen generators. This shows that we are well on our way to creating a completely own and unique product portfolio in hydrogen production where Metacon can offer both market-leading electrolysers and a unique alternative and electricity-independent system product to produce the same green hydrogen for e.g. refueling stations. The work of scaling up the HHG system to its full potential has already begun and should be able to result in a compact reformer with the equivalent production capacity of a 1 MW electrolyzer – but without having to be connected to the grid”, says Christer Wikner, CEO of Metacon.