The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) H2Rescue made its way to Capitol Hill to the inaugural World Fire Congress in Washington, D.C.
H2Rescue is a zero-emission fuel cell-powered emergency vehicle designed to offer critical relief in a time of emergency and natural disasters.
"This is an opportunity to showcase an alternative technology to global decision makers who support emergency efforts," said Nick Josefik, an industrial engineer at ERDC’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL).
"H2Rescue is an excellent example of collaboration between agencies that are creating a solution to help emergency preparedness and strengthen our nation's ability to respond to these natural disasters," he added. “It's really exciting to build a physical object that can actually be implemented and help people accomplish their mission.”
H2Rescue is a culmination of work from a consortium of federal agencies and industry partners including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office and Vehicle Technologies Office, the U.S. Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science & Technology Directorate, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Accelera™ by Cummins.
World Fire Congress established a global fire service leadership network dedicated to supporting and strengthening the fire service around the world. ERDC-CERL researcher Lance Larkin, alongside Josefik, showcased H2Rescue to the eyes of global fire service leaders.
"We wanted to provide a demonstration of this prototype emergency response vehicle to show it off," Larkin said. "We wanted to ask emergency responders which of H2Rescue's capabilities they are most interested in, and what they would like to see if we could expand its potential uses."
At the event, Josefik and Larkin connected with fire service leaders from Bulgaria, France, Finland and other countries to showcase H2Rescue. Leaders also were able to ask questions and see the H2Rescue in person. Larkin said the energy at World Fire Congress was electric and exciting.
"The firefighters I've spoken to are very excited about this technology because they've said it's going to revolutionize how firefighters use new technologies," he said.
Researchers from ERDC-CERL tested H2Rescue during two demonstrations of 180-mile round trip drives in 2023. The truck's high-capacity hydrogen tank system enabled it to complete an 180 mile round trip, while also supporting a minimum of 25 kW of continuous electrical load for 72 hours.
"H2Rescue is a clean tool that can provide power, water and shelter immediately to an emergency situation while minimizing the amount of equipment you have to bring in." Josefik said. "We can immediately begin exporting power, so we can get initial eyes on the situation and bring power to start helping with that recovery effort.”
Hydrogen vehicles are commercially available, but still have plenty of room for development according to the H2Rescue team. At World Fire Congress, Josefik said they are looking for feedback to incorporate into the next version of H2Rescue.
"This is a great opportunity to talk to people who are in the field because, as a researcher, we can design something but that real feedback from people in the field on the capabilities of what we can do and where we need to stretch the capabilities in the next version is so valuable to research," he said.
The H2Rescue team plans to incorporate feedback they received at the World Fire Congress into the next H2Rescue prototype.