Delaware launches fuel cell center

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 82 KB
• Volume: 2009
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1464-2859
• DOI: 10.1016/s1464-2859(09)70157-9

✦ Synopsis

I N B R I E F Crown materials handling demos going well

Ohio-based Crown Equipment Corporation -a leading manufacturer of materials handling equipment -is collaborating with three providers of hydrogen fuel cell power packs -Plug Power, Canada's Hydrogenics and the Nuvera/ East Penn Manufacturing (Deka) team [see also page 1]. Also collaborating with Crown is Oorja Protonics, which is developing direct methanol fuel cell systems for such applications.

Facilities running two-or three-shift operation with a large number of lift trucks are ideal circumstances for considering fuel cells, says Eric Jensen, R&D manager at Crown, in Industry Week magazine. For two-shift operation, he says either fast-charging batteries or fuel cells can be effective, but he would favor fuel cells if a hydrogen refueling capability was already installed.

Jensen's conclusions draw on Crown's fuel cell work under a grant of nearly $1m from Ohio's Third Frontier program [FCB, May 2008]. 'We were given this grant to qualify our portfolio of lift trucks with fuel cell battery replacement power packs,' he says. 'Our project is to qualify as many of our trucks as possible with the commercially available fuel cell power packs. We are acting as an enabler, to allow our customers that want to do a complete transformation to hydrogen-powered warehouse to do so with a full range of trucks.' He explains that for lift truck users the biggest fuel cell benefit is not from fuel savings, but from labor savings by eliminating battery-charging. 'Hydrogen refueling only takes about two minutes, while replacing a depleted battery can take as long as 40 minutes, three times a day,' he says. 'Then factor in eight hours of charging plus another eight hours for cooling, and threeshift operation can result in three batteries per lift truck.'