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Availability is a widely mentioned concern. Hydrogen production is limited in
some areas of the country, most notably
in western states outside of California and
Texas. Deliveries typically are made via
tank truck, and both fuel producer and
delivery driver must be specially licensed
and trained in handling the potentially
dangerous gas. In cases where reliable
delivery isn’t feasible or cost-effective, users
may opt to produce their own hydrogen.
However, the cost of infrastructure, safety
measures, and maintenance may be prohibitively expensive for some.
Critics question whether hydrogen-fueled lift trucks are as environmentally
friendly as supporters say they are. One
study conducted by the U.S. Department
of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory
found that, when the emissions produced
during the end-to-end cycle of hydrogen
production, storage, delivery, fueling, and
vehicle operation are taken into account, a
hydrogen-powered lift truck may account
for more greenhouse gas emissions than a
battery-powered truck.
Furthermore, you can’t simply drop a
fuel cell into any lift truck. The truck manufacturer must conduct extensive testing
and, if necessary, take steps to ensure
performance and safety won’t be compromised, says Scott Carlin, electric product
planning and product support manager
for Toyota Material Handling U.S.A. Inc.
His company is working with suppliers
of alternative fuels to verify that they and
their products comply with Toyota’s testing protocols and safety standards. Other
manufacturers have similar programs;
examples include Crown, which says it
has qualified more than 30 forklift models for use with hydrogen fuel cells, and
The Raymond Corp., which believes it has
the largest number of fuel-cell–qualified
models of any lift truck OEM, according to
Arlan Purdy, Raymond’s product manager
of energy storage systems and emerging
technologies.
But there’s more work to be done.
Operators know when lead-acid batteries
are losing their charge, but they can’t say
the same for fuel cells. “You want to be able
to get some communication to the opera-
tor that the fuel cell will be shutting down,”
Purdy says. “Lift trucks that were designed
kilogram of hydrogen delivers 20
kilowatt-hours of energy to a lift
truck, and that $10 of hydrogen
produces the same amount of work
in a truck outfitted with fuel cells as
approximately $2 of electricity in a
battery-powered truck. (This exam-
ple is based on an estimated cost of
$20 for one-half of a battery charge
for a reach truck.)
Tomaszewski also considers the
unscheduled maintenance rate for
hydrogen fuel cells and supporting
infrastructure to be high. He points
to a report by the less-than-truck-
load carrier FedEx Freight, which
conducted a four-year pilot with the
U.S. Department of Energy. FedEx
Freight converted a fleet of 40 Class
1 forklifts at a terminal in Missouri
to hydrogen. In its 2012 update on
the project, the carrier noted that
it had encountered problems with
fueling and operating fuel cells in
cold weather (later resolved by add-
ing heaters to each truck, among
other measures), and that the power
units required frequent unsched-
uled repairs. A separate NREL
study, also in 2012, found that more
than 70 percent of the repairs to
the hydrogen fueling infrastruc-
ture it reviewed were unscheduled.
Unscheduled maintenance means
unexpected downtime, something
no warehouse or DC can afford.
As for labor, battery stalwarts
say that opportunity and fast
charging—where batteries are partially charged during breaks and
between shifts at strategically located charging stations—eliminate
concerns about operators’ productivity. Time-consuming equalization is not a problem, either, they
say. It generally takes place at night
(opportunity charging) or on weekends (fast charging), according to
PowerDesigners USA, a maker of
battery charging systems.
