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,
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Wonder how many ammonia fueling stations there are around the world. At one point in time when you proclaimed a large fleet of your envisioned (aka pipe dream) ammonia eating trucks on a rental basis will hit the beaches on the east coast of the North America someday soon. I raised this same question & your reply is that you would be providing a fleet of OTR tankers to service this fleet. How impractical and inefficient would that be to keep these units "up & running" in a timely manner especially with the traffic jam on the I-90 corridor in the States and weather issues in the NE & Canada. Maybe you can use the rapid transit system or Bidens new high speed rail idea that "might" happen in the next century or two. By all means Don't use the MTA system "Poor Ole Charlie" has never been found - https://www.youtube.com > watch If FAC strips out this link goggle these words - Kingston Trio M.T.A. YouTube - a 1959 song.
Hope Santa brings you a new & improved set of Lego blocks so you can build a second prototype out of the latest technology available to mankind in the name of Going Green/Save the planet.
For the record, I fully believe that the US has made significant strides in cleaning up the environment over the last 50+ years and continues to do so. (wish other countries would do the same 0 like China, India etc.). But I must confess that I sent pollutants into the atmosphere earlier this week for about 8 hours - like I have over the last 26 years - I burned a pile of dead vegetation and tree limbs this past Monday. This is allowed by our county & state (GA) - and in most rural or semi rural counties. We have a 3/4 of an acre of heavily wooded property and I clean the dead stuff ( limbs, scrub trimmings, etc) up into a pile and give it a Zippo (that is lighter used in Vietnam by US soldiers) treatment. Certainly, CO2 is released along with smoke and other bad stuff. But on the other hand the healthier trees process the CO2 into O2 which released via a process called photosynthesis during the night - a good thing. Georgia is blessed with an abundance of tree as is many of the starts are in the SE Regions and those along the Appalachian & Rocky mountain region and northern Mid West states.
No one also mentions how hydrogen will be stored and transported , all of this is by ammonia. Like you pointed out there is no supply or refuelling for hydrogen.
As pointed out the cost of doing this is so expensive only some small government backed projects exist
Heli is one of a handful of manufacturers globally producing hydrogen-powered forklifts and a spokesman says the company will add additional models in this "important and promising segment".
"In the future, Heli will continue to make efforts in the field of hydrogen forklifts (and) launch a series of hydrogen-powered products covering all types of counterbalance forklifts, tractors, and storage trucks," he explains. Heli will also increase its cooperation with core enterprises in the hydrogen industry chain to contribute to the development of hydrogen-powered forklifts globally.
One of the key challenges facing the hydrogen forklift market is the limited availability of hydrogen and the lack of fuelling facilities.
So they acknowledge that there is limited availability at present but are continuing to contribute to the development of these units. So are other established companies including JCB who were mentioned in the original post.
Funny that none of them talk about using ammonia as the fuel though....
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