So LinkedIn community and composites experts out there.
This is now further coverage of the JEC World 2024.
And I am here together with ACTC, a group member
of HRC from China. Maybe you remember last year
I've shown you guys with Erich Fries, the managing director of Germany,
the XPeng Drone here. Today we have other stuff to show you.
And with me now is Viktor Reimer. Maybe you've seen Viktor
in our last LinkedIn live, where we were talking about hydrogen,
and today is also about hydrogen.
So, Viktor, my first question to you is, what's your role at ACTC?
My role is to lead a team of engineers to develop a hydrogen pressure vessel
that you can see here. The hydrogen pressure vessel,
which we use to store hydrogen. The pressure tank we develop
reaches more than 700 bars of working pressure
and is designed with a high safety factor
of around 2.35. My task is to set up a team in China,
in Changshu, where ACTC is based to develop the tank.
So there, we have all the machinery there already installed.
And I did this when I arrived in China in 2020,
where I started with one person, that's me.
And now we are more than eight people working on the project
for pressurized storage; for the pressure vessel
to store hydrogen. -So, Viktor, thank you
for introducing yourself and your role at ACTC.
Now let's move to the HRC group. Tell us about the HRC group
in general and ACTC and Engenuity, which I've met already in Burgess Hill (UK)
last year. -Well, HRC is an international
parts provider, which includes different kind
of technologies to make composite parts.
And it mainly consists of three areas: Engenuity is the development
of the composite analytical development
like FEA, CAE and so on. It also includes ACTC, my part,
where we make protoypes. So we produce there prototypes
for automotive industry. Especially the pressure vessels,
which is my personal topic. And the third one
is HRC mass manufacturing. The area where we produce parts
for the composite industry. Mainly transportation,
but also like aviation and cars. Usually it's really
strong cars. And of course also some others
like transportation for trains and other topics,
wind power and construction. -Viktor, now tell us
please, about the hydrogen tank. How is that developed
within the HRC group? -HRC group we develop
the pressure vessel with all three entities of HRC.
HRC mass Manufacturing, ACTC as part of HRC
and Engenuity, of course. At Engenuity we make
all the analytical tasks like finite element analysis
and at ACTC we prototype. As you see in the background,
this is one of the first prototypes we made at ACTC in Changshu, China.
And HRC mass manufacturing support us on topics
for later industrialization of the product.
So, Viktor, what is your market focus on hydrogen storage tanks?
Our market focus is mainly for strong vehicles,
heavy duty vehicles. Like for transportation,
for truck and trains and hydrogen transportation
in special containers. For those we need quite big tanks
with more than 150 or 250l. In the background
you see a smaller pressure vessel, which is designed for demonstration.
We can bring it here easily, but actually we focus
on much higher volumes for more than 250l.
We also focus on 350 bar and 700 bars. This gives us very good capacity
of the pressure vessel to store the hydrogen
in a mobile application.
So, Viktor, thanks for the explanations.
Now, what do we have here on the booth?
Can you explain us about the hydrogen tanks?
What you see here is our demonstrator to show how we develop products
to store hydrogen in a hydrogen pressure vessel.
This component is quite complex as this is made
not just from carbon fiber. It's also made from metal parts,
plastic parts and all the system integration,
as you see here. Our other topics that we also implement
into the hydrogen storage is sustainability.
How to make CO2 footprint of a product lower?
How to reduce it? So we look first of all
on replacing the materials by materials which use
just lower CO2 footprint. Like the plastic liner can be replaced
by other materials to be more sustainable.
Or the resin, which covers the actual carbon fiber.
The resin that we can get from our partners
to reduce the CO2 footprint. Currently we have a running project
on reduction of the CO2 footprint of the pressure vessel.