Fuel Cells for Forklift Trucks
As many of you know, Nuvera, and our partner, East Penn Manufacturing, have developed The Total Power Solution for the North American Material Handling market. What many of you may not know, however, is what exactly the “material handling market” consists of. It certainly affects us every day, as we shop in grocery stores, purchase goods from retail centers and even order shoes online. Material handling is the industry of storing, lifting and transporting goods in and out of warehouses or moving parts and subassemblies within a manufacturing organization.
The preferred mode of transport in most of these warehouses, distribution centers and manufacturing operations is the forklift, currently battery powered when used indoors and IC engine powered when used outdoors. In many of these high traffic settings, time is literally money, so the more time the forklift operators have on the floor, moving goods, the more productive they can be, which means higher revenues for the warehouse.
This is where fuel cells come in. In place of lead acid batteries, forklifts are powered by fuel cell/battery hybrid packs, that are never changed out of the truck, and can be refueled with gaseous hydrogen in under two minutes. This means 15 minute trips to change batteries, which can happen once or more per shift, are eliminated, and valuable floor space is added to the profit center by eliminating the battery changing infrastructure. Fuel cells make material handling more productive.
If you want to learn more about the material handling industries view of fuel cells for forklift trucks, check out these two articles:
DC Velocity: Getting a Lift from Hydrogen
Material Handling Management: Lift Trucks get Cleaner and Greener
DOE Early Market Fact Sheet: Fuel Cells for Material Handling Equipment
Tags: Forklift, fuel cell, Hydrogen Dispenser, Material Handling
March 20th, 2008 at 3:19 am
[...] admin wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe preferred mode of transport in most of these warehouses, distribution centers and manufacturing operations is the forklift, currently battery powered when used indoors and IC engine powered when used outdoors. … [...]