The Hanseatic City of Hamburg is taking a leading role in Germany when it comes to the application and use of ecologic hydrogen technology and to supporting the development of this technology. Currently, public transport in the city is already using hydrogen busses and the Alster-Touristik GmbH operates a hydrogen passenger boat beside a fuel cell powered tractor used for baggage handling at the airport of Hamburg.

At the port of Hamburg the project partners HHLA Logistics, Linde Gas and STILL are now opening a new chapter with the support of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. For the first time fork lift trucks with a fuel cell drive take a moving role in intralogistics.

The Privy Council of Hamburg from the office of City Development and Environment Dr. Stephan H. Winters officially inaugurated the STILL R 60-25 Fuel Cell fork lift truck and a new hydrogen station from Linde Gas at HHLA Logistics on 15th September. It is planned to conduct a practical work test for the duration of two years.

The contract logistics service provider HHLA, a subsidiary of the Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG, will operate the fuel cell powered truck in everyday warehouse operation. The test phase is to show the advantages of the alternative drive system with respect to performance, energy efficiency, handling and maintenance. If the test is evaluated positively, the current fleet of about 100 electric trucks could be complemented by fuel cell driven trucks.

The Hamburg based intralogistics and fork lift truck company STILL supports Hamburg as the leading hydrogen city with hydrogen technology for intralogistics. STILL has already gathered a lot of experience in different projects of the kind and by now has the largest fleet of fuel cell driven trucks in Europe. This includes fork lift trucks, reach trucks, vertical order pickers and tractors.

The airport of Hamburg has already been operating electric a fuel cell propelled tractor from STILL for baggage handling since 2006. In the long term the airport is planning to expand its fleet of vehicles with low emission and by this reduce its exhaust emissions on the whole.

All over Germany there are more projects. At BASF Coatings, one of the world’s leading companies in the paint industry two different trucks are being prepared for operation with the future oriented drive for industrial operation: one FM-X 20 reach truck and one R 60 electric fork lift truck.

For demonstration purposes an RX 60-45 fuel cell and an EK 12 vertical order picker are available.

In principle all the systems made by STILL are alike. They are hybrid systems and consist of the batch of fuel cells (with a capacity of three times six kilowatts, for example) an electric power storage which collects electric energy when braking and releases this energy during acceleration, the gas tanks for the hydrogen (filled with 2.5 kilograms of hydrogen at a pressure of 350 bar) a radiator and a compressor as well as an additional counter weight to compensate the difference to the heavier battery. Depending on the application, the electric power storage either consists of high performance capacitors or fast charging and discharging battery systems (currently supplied by Hoppecke). Depending on the performance needed, fuel cell systems raging from 5 to 10 kW are used. The fuel cells are supplied by Hydrogenics and Nuvera.

Overview of the advantages of fuel cell technology

Clean energy

Operating a truck with hydrogen does not cause any polluting emission. No particulates, nitrogen oxides or carbon dioxides which can harm our environment are emitted. The “emission” from the reaction of the hydrogen with oxygen from the air is pure water in the form of water vapour.

No change of batteries

If the hydrogen stock on board of the truck is used up, all that is needed is a short stop at the hydrogen station to refill the truck and make it fully operational again. Laborious changing of the battery and keeping a second battery is not needed and this yields infrastructural and ecologic advantages. Also, this solution is considerably easier to handle.

Minimised interruption of the operation

Refilling the truck with hydrogen only takes 5 to 10 minutes. The time needed for refuelling depends on the design of the fuel station. This makes the fuel cell much faster than conventional batteries which require hours of recharging.

Simple multi-shift operation

To ensure multi-shift operation all the fuel cell needs is refuelling with hydrogen in due time. This makes a stock of expensive exchange batteries for each truck oblivious.

Full performance

The STILL fuel cell power pack provides the full nominal power until the hydrogen fuel is used up. Opposed to this, the nominal power of a battery drops continuously during operation.

The nearly unique experience with fuel cell technology STILL looks back on and its focus on the protection of the environment will make STILL follow this line of development consistently and intensively.