MIT startup says it can turn diesel trucks into cheaper hydrogen haulers; see it at Disrupt

Diesel substance powers everything from shipping to agriculture, and with prices hitting grounds highs successful caller weeks, governments astir the satellite are scrambling to incorporate the fallout. 

For now, that’s meant releasing substance from stockpiles, but successful the coming years, the reply mightiness beryllium a caller exertion from an MIT startup called LNK Energies.

LNK has created a mode to person existing heavy-duty trucks from diesel to hydrogen, slashing contamination and costs portion shielding operators from the terms spikes that effect from geopolitical instability similar the warfare successful Iran. “If you look astatine full outgo of ownership of a Class 8 truck, it’s 13% cheaper than diesel,” Alexis Huynh, main exertion serviceman astatine LNK Energies, told TechCrunch. (Class 8 is the heaviest class of trucks, including large rigs.)

Automotive companies person been exploring the usage of hydrogen successful long-haul trucking successful portion due to the fact that refilling a hydrogen vessel is faster than recharging the monolithic batteries those trucks require. But hydrogen is challenging to determination to refilling stations, and the unit tanks required to store it connected the motortruck are ample and costly. 

LNK’s attack is to transportation hydrogen chemically attached to different compound. Liquid integrated hydrogen carriers, oregon LOHCs, are liquids that tin sorb and aboriginal merchandise hydrogen, and they person been wide studied, but mostly for moving ample quantities of hydrogen from refineries to fueling stations. The instrumentality needed to abstracted hydrogen from the LOHC, known arsenic a reactor, has been excessively large to acceptable onto a truck.

“A batch of the reactors that LOHC companies person contiguous are truly large. They’re astir the size of a shipping container,” Huynh said. “We person shrunk that fundamentally to the size of a mini fridge.”

Moving the reactor onto the motortruck saves a astonishing magnitude of energy. When hydrogen is stored connected a truck, it indispensable beryllium pressurized to much than 11,000 psi (800 bar), astir 800 times mean aerial pressure, and squeezing it that hard takes a batch of power. Because LNK’s substance carries the hydrogen successful liquid signifier and releases it connected committee arsenic needed, that measurement goes away. “We’re eliminating the costly compression step,” Sayandeep Biswas, co-founder and CEO of LNK Energies, told TechCrunch. 

In LNK’s system, erstwhile the hydrogen is released connected the truck, it tin beryllium burned successful a accepted interior combustion engine, the benignant successful today’s diesel trucks, with conscionable a fewer modifications. The institution uses discarded vigor from the motor to assistance powerfulness the on-board reactor. Or, if the trucking institution wants to afloat destruct combustion emissions, it tin usage substance cells instead, which person hydrogen into energy to powerfulness electrical motors.

The LOHC tin beryllium stored successful a accepted substance vessel and dispensed utilizing pumps, conscionable similar diesel. “The full hydrogen infrastructure doesn’t request to exist,” Biswas said. “It’s conscionable a modular diesel station.”

Biswas and Huynh person a objection reactor moving successful the laboratory that tin powerfulness an motor from a lawnmower. In 18 months, they program to instal a larger mentation successful a commercialized truck. 

The trucks volition outgo much up front, but committedness to beryllium cheaper to operate. The duo are assured that they tin undercut diesel astatine a terms of $6.50 per gallon aft they’ve made conscionable 50 to 100 trucks. None of their projections see authorities subsidies. “The thought isn’t to person a exertion that is cheaper astatine scale, but 1 that is cheaper adjacent during that adoption period,” Biswas said.

LNK volition contiguous unrecorded connected signifier astatine TechCrunch Disrupt connected Wednesday Oct 13-15 arsenic portion of our Startup Battlefield transportation competition. Come articulation america successful San Francisco and instrumentality portion successful the action.