Description of capability

LOHC-powered trucks featuring onboard dehydrogenation are a promising option to decarbonize long-haul trucking.

Key people

Sayandeep Biswas and Bill Green

Technology Readiness Level (1-9)

3

Needs that this could potentially address

Decarbonizing heavy-duty vehicles

Tech specs

This gives a cost of 22/GJ LHV; however, considering the current diesel price of $29/GJ LHV from April 2023, the LOHC option is cheaper.

the total mass of the proposed LOHC truck including fuel is expected to be about 2000 lbs more than the diesel counterpart. Accounting for the payload distribution, from the Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey (VIUS) 2002, (64) we see a negligible loss in total cargo capacity of the trucking system, since only a tiny fraction of trucks on the road are so close to the maximum weight limit.

Estimated time & cost to commercialize

$250M and 10 years

Outstanding risks

  • Supply chain of charging stations, hydrogen-lean LOHC recovery, and LOHC hydrogenation facilities
  • “A major challenge with the onboard dehydrogenation system is the need to meet variable power demand over the drive cycle. Additionally, system startup and shutdown stages are estimated to take a few hours, which is a significant portion of the daily driving time of 11 h”

References

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.3c01919