Hydrogen is said to be the clean fuel of the future, but can hydrogen really work as a fuel. The simple and easy answer to this question is NO. Hydrogen will never work as a cost effective fuel in any industry be it transportation Industry or Port and terminals hydrogen will be just to expensive when compared to other alternatives.


First there are now two ways hydrogen is being promoted as the saver fuel of the World. Fuel cell or IC engine ,which power source is used Hydrogen has still the same old problem You have to pressurise it to 350 bar and it has to fit in high pressure tanks both on the machine and when stored at a facility. The cost of this is extremely expensive Toyota spent over A$ 7 million for a refuelling station that can produce only 80kg of hydrogen per day.

Heli report their new hydrogen 4 - 5 ton forklift will have a range of 4 hours this is similar to an all electric truck , one reason for this might be a small hydrogen storage tank due to the high cost of the tanks themselves a 5kg Hydrogen tank would cost over $5,000. JCB State that hydrogen fuel cells need de ionised coolant that cost £20 per litre. and hydrogen its self would cost around $9.5 per kg. So for both to run and to service hydrogen fuel cells will be just to expensive for any company to use.

Hydrogen IC engines also have some major issues the first one is the low compression ratio due to the pre ignition of the hydrogen. The result of this is an engine that give much lower power compared to a conventional diesel engine. The JCB Hydrogen engine gives around 80KW when the same JCB Diesel engine gives 120KW. New Hydrogen IC engine equipment will also have the major issue of the high pressure tanks and storage.

Finally there is the problem of hydrogen supply. All the hydrogen projects around the world are to store and transport this hydrogen as ammonia meaning it has to be cracked back into hydrogen when it gets to site, a very expensive process. Here's what Aramco have to say on how they will store and transport their hydrogen

Hydrogen is a very light molecule. It can be liquified, but that requires keeping it at a temperature of -254°C, which makes it very difficult and expensive to transport - particularly over long distances. The solution lay in converting the hydrogen into a chemical compound which is already widely traded around the world: ammonia. 

Compared to hydrogen, liquified ammonia is far more convenient, practical and cost-effective to transport, in terms of both the required temperature and pressure conditions. 

Once the blue ammonia reaches its destination, it can be converted back into blue hydrogen,