FUTURE HYDROGEN TEST CENTER FOR BELGIUM
Opening in 2025
Operated by the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics

Demonstrating innovations
Interdisciplinary exchange & collaboration projects
Qualification tests
Safe Hydrogen Infrastructure in the center of Europe
Fundamental research
Education & skills training
The VKI is charged by the Federal Government to create and operate a shared generic infrastructure opened to external partners from academic, research centers and industry to perform their large-scale experimentation and qualification on site or remotely.
Experimental Capabilities
The measurement modules will be modular and interchangeable. The laboratory will be designed to perform experiments from scaled models to industrial real size. All thermodynamic status can be studied from gaseous, liquid to two-phase flow.
The capabilities will cover a wide application range over the value chain of hydrogen economy (not exhaustive list):
- Fluid dynamics & heat transfer physics
- Long duration storage
- Advanced materials for new reservoirs / Material (metals) compatibility
- Passive Autocatalytic Recombiners (PARs) for hydrogen removal
- Hydrogen combustion in gas turbines
- Fuel cells
- Fueling procedures and protocols
- Electrolyzes
- Safety
- Chemical reactions in hydrogen production (e.g. pyrolysis…)
- Benchmarking: experiments for numerical and models validation


Hydrogen is as a game changer in the new era of Energy Transition
- Reach a climate-neutral energy consumption
- De-carbonize heavy industry
“VKI has 65 years of experience in experimental and numerical fluid dynamics. VKI Team daily designs and implements new experimental rigs, executes challenging measurement campaigns, performs advanced data post-processing, has sound understanding of measured complex physical phenomena… In addition, VKI has an in-depth knowledge of instrumentation and sensor, accuracy and precision maximization.”
Get in touch with us

Peter SIMKENS
Business Development Manager
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Laura PEVERONI
Senior Project Manager