A thermodynamic analytical approach is proposed to obtain the transient temperature rise of hydrogen when pre-cooled hydrogen is heated through filling equipment at a refueling station. In this approach, the filling equipment is assumed to be a simple and straight pipeline, and the heat balance based on the thermodynamics for hydrogen flowing in the pipeline is analyzed. The internal surface temperature of the pipeline wall is required to calculate the heat flux into hydrogen. Therefore, we propose a solution to obtain the temperature distribution in the pipeline wall when hydrogen with lower temperature than the pipeline flows unsteadily. Based on the proposed solution, we calculate the heat flux and acquire the hydrogen temperature. The hydrogen temperatures predicted by this approach are compared with experimental data for the temperature rise of hydrogen heated through actual filling equipment, and a good agreement is shown. Thus, we show that this approach is useful for simulating the temperature rise of hydrogen flowing in the filling equipment. (C) 2017 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.