Diesel fuel powers everything from shipping to agriculture, and with prices hitting record highs in recent weeks, governments around the world are scrambling to contain the fallout. For now, that’s meant releasing fuel from stockpiles, but in the coming years, the answer might be a new technology from an MIT startup called LNK Energies. LNK has created a way to convert existing heavy-duty trucks from diesel to hydrogen, slashing pollution and costs while shielding operators from the price spikes that result from geopolitical instability like the war in Iran.
But hydrogen is challenging to move to refilling stations, and the pressure tanks required to store it on the truck are large and costly. LNK’s approach is to carry hydrogen chemically attached to another compound. Liquid organic hydrogen carriers, or LOHCs, are liquids that can absorb and later release hydrogen, and they have been widely studied, but mostly for moving large quantities of hydrogen from refineries to fueling stations.
The equipment needed to separate hydrogen from the LOHC, known as a reactor, has been too big to fit onto a truck. They’re about the size of a shipping container,” Huynh said. When hydrogen is stored on a truck, it must be pressurized to more than 11,000 psi (800 bar), roughly 800 times normal air pressure, and squeezing it that hard takes a lot of power.
Because LNK’s fuel carries the hydrogen in liquid form and releases it on board as needed, that step goes away. In LNK’s system, once the hydrogen is released on the truck, it can be burned in a conventional internal combustion engine, the kind in today’s diesel trucks, with just a few modifications. The company uses waste heat from the engine to help power the on-board reactor.
Or, if the trucking company wants to fully eliminate combustion emissions, it can use fuel cells instead, which convert hydrogen into electricity to power electric motors. The LOHC can be stored in a traditional fuel tank and dispensed using pumps, just like diesel. In 18 months, they plan to install a larger version in a commercial truck.
The trucks will cost more up front, but promise to be cheaper to operate. The duo are confident that they can undercut diesel at a price of $6.50 per gallon after they’ve made just 50 to 100 trucks. None of their projections include government subsidies.
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