Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
Well - it ain't all as shiny as it seems.
From that link:
Using hydrogen generated by windmill electricity generates less CO2 than using electricity straight from the grid.
Who could have guessed.
A bogus comparison means deliberate disinformation. It should make all the signs flare red.
The forklifts are compared to lead acid battery forklifts, which have a similar operating time but take 6 to 8 hours to charge.
Lithium iron phosphate battery forklifts would be lighter, last longer, charge faster, but also be more expensive than their lead acid counterparts.
I bet they'd still be cheaper than the hydrogen ones.
So, Toyota. Run your comparison to windmill fed LiFePO4 battery forklifts for a change.
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There are problems with the study, but there is certainly no disinformation. Only lack of understanding on your part.
First of all, you cannot build a "light weight forklift" as mass is stability for payload lift. This is why lead acid batteries have dominated for decades. They provide both power and ballast. Lighter propane powered lifts often have heavy steel ballast plates. Using Li-FePO4 batteries instead of the lead acid is logical and has already been tried. The problem becomes charging times for the cost. 30 minutes or more is a loss of productivity. A few minutes for a tank switch out means a hydrogen forklift is back to work being productive while the pure battery lift is charging. This doesn't mean you can't have battery change schemes, but now you have increased the cost of your battery pack reserves. The comparison to lead-acid battery powered lifts is logical as that is the overwhelming standard currently. They are ubiquitous and cheap enough to have more than enough on hand to provide service while some are on charge times.
And this is just a study. It is meant to find failure points and areas of improvement. Cost is not an immediate goal but it is understood. You are comparing common industry tech to cutting edge developments. This would be like me deriding all the electric powered cars on this forum for being way too expensive and finicky and hard to charge in comparison to my bio-fueled diesels which cost pennies per mile to run and are a proven long ranging transportation solution.
My biggest criticism of the study is the use of battery power for storage. This battery storage is to bridge over dead wind days and produce hydrogen at a constant rate. Producing hydrogen and storing that for bridge days would be far more logical and cost effective. Electrolysers are common and not expensive. So are metal hydride storage tanks.