LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Miles from the Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the Air Liquide factory.
The company’s goal is to produce liquid hydrogen to supply the transportation industry.
Dave Edwards is the director and an advocate for Hydrogen Energy, Air Liquide and says converting to hydrogen for fuel is an energy saver and will cut down on global warming.
“If you think about places like Las Vegas or any city that has heavy transit, a heavy transportation sector, there’s particulate emissions from diesel-like buses and trains, those issues are addressed by battery-electric and fuel electric vehicles because they have zero emissions at the tailpipe,” Edwards added.
The factory will convert landfill gas in a purification process to churn out low-cost, low-carbon hydrogen.
“Our production facility produces about 30 tons of hydrogen per day. If you could take all that hydrogen and put it into fuel tanks and light-duty vehicles, it would be on the order of about 40,000 cars on the highway and it could be fueled with that continuously,” he said.
Currently, around 20 people are working at the plant, they hope to expand as this new market of transportation fuel grows.
“We know it’s going to start in California, they usually do from a transportation perspective but it needs to grow beyond California and become a national adoption for vehicles,” he said.
The start-up of the North Las Vegas plant is just the first step in decarbonizing the transportation sector as the company continues to expand in Las Vegas and the west coast.
The company hopes to have a grand opening and a ribbon-cutting ceremony next month.