Amazon thinks hydrogen can be a more sustainable fuel for vehicles at its warehouses, but it’ll have to clean up hydrogen production first.

  • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Strange. I’m sure that H2 has benefits to larger vehicles like Trucks. But on small vehicles like forklifts, I thought that battery technology (even Lead-Acid batteries) were sufficient?

    Did the H2 fuel cell shrink down in size recently to make forklift-sized vehicles usable for H2 fuel? This is a development that surprises me.

    • Hypx@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 months ago

      There are fuel cell powered drones out there. Size hasn’t been an issue for a long time.

      • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Do you know what the technology is for the pressurized H2 at these sizes? Its been my understanding that larger vehicles scale better (ie: thicker walls and bigger containers) to better deal with the H2 volume issue.

        Bigger vehicles can take advantage of exotic / expensive processes like liquified H2 or 700-bar pressures or whatnot. I don’t think that’s been miniaturized to drone or forklift sizes though.

        • Hypx@lemmy.worldOP
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          10 months ago

          They’re still using pressurized gas tanks. Apparently, not even a drone is not too small for such things.

        • cynar@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          The drones generally don’t use compressed hydrogen (at least the ones I’ve seen). It’s too dangerous. Instead they use a pellet based storage system. You can liberate hydrogen from it, but it’s rate limited. It will burn, but it can’t launch like a flaming rocket.

          The downside is the pellet systems aren’t as simple as just refilling the tank.