HYDROGEN POWERED LONG HAUL

According to the American Trucking Associations, more than 72% of goods and services moved in the U.S. travel by trucks. And more than 60% of the miles logged by the trucking industry come from heavy-duty diesel-powered, greenhouse gas-emitting semi-trailer trucks.

A smarter, cleaner way to maintain that interstate flow of goods while mitigating climate change would be to power the long-haul trucking sector with hydrogen fuel cells. 

Fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) have been around for a long time, but long-haul truckers still face the classic chicken-and-egg cost and infrastructure dilemma that other clean energy sectors have experienced.

According to the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, a fuel cell is a device that generates electricity through an electrochemical reaction, not combustion. It combines hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, heat and water. In transportation applications, the electricity powers the electric motor that drives the vehicle’s propulsion system. And because fuel cells contain no moving parts, they operate silently with extremely high reliability.

“You can think of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle as an electric vehicle where you’ve replaced the battery with a fuel cell, and the electric charge used for ‘fuel’ with compressed hydrogen gas,” explained Kenneth “K.C.” Neyerlin, an electrochemist with the Electrochemical Engineering and Materials Chemistry group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) - link - picture link - more like this - link