LNK Energies says it can adapt existing heavy-duty diesel trucks to run on hydrogen, slashing pollution and costs while shielding operators from price spikes linked to geopolitical instability, including the war in Iran. Its system releases hydrogen from a liquid carrier onboard, avoiding the need for large, high-pressure storage tanks. The MIT startup says trucks could use standard fueling equipment.
Hydrogen has drawn interest for long-haul trucking partly because refilling a tank takes less time than recharging the large batteries these trucks need. However, transporting hydrogen to refueling stations is difficult, and the tanks required to store it on trucks are bulky and expensive. Diesel, which powers sectors such as shipping and agriculture, has recently reached record prices, prompting governments to release fuel from stockpiles.
LNK’s system transports hydrogen chemically bound to another compound. The liquid organic hydrogen carriers, or LOHCs, can absorb hydrogen and release it later. Researchers have studied LOHCs extensively, mainly for transporting large volumes of hydrogen from refineries to fueling stations. Until now, the reactors needed to extract the gas have generally been too large for a truck.
“A lot of the reactors that LOHC companies have today are really large. They’re about the size of a shipping container,” LNK chief technology officer Alexis Huynh told TechCrunch. “We have shrunk that basically to the size of a mini fridge.”
With the reactor onboard, LNK’s system avoids compressing hydrogen for storage. Conventional truck tanks need to hold hydrogen at more than 11,000 psi (800 bar), about 800 times normal air pressure, and compression requires considerable power. LNK’s liquid fuel carries hydrogen in liquid form and releases it onboard as needed, removing that step. “We’re eliminating the expensive compression step,” said Sayandeep Biswas, LNK’s co-founder and CEO.
Once released, the hydrogen can run a conventional internal-combustion engine like those in today’s diesel trucks, with only a few modifications. The engine’s waste heat helps power the onboard reactor. Companies seeking to eliminate combustion emissions can use fuel cells instead, converting hydrogen into electricity for electric motors.
The liquid carrier fits in a traditional fuel tank and can be dispensed with pumps, as diesel is. Biswas said, “The entire hydrogen infrastructure doesn’t need to exist,” adding, “It’s just a standard diesel station.”
Biswas and Huynh have a working reactor demonstration in the lab that can power a lawnmower engine. They plan to fit a larger version in a commercial truck in 18 months.
LNK says the converted trucks will have higher upfront costs but are promised to be cheaper to operate. Huynh told TechCrunch that a converted Class 8 truck, the heaviest category and one that includes big rigs, is projected to have a total cost of ownership 13% below that of a diesel truck. The founders are confident they can undercut diesel at a fuel price of $6.50 per gallon after producing 50 to 100 trucks. These projections exclude government subsidies and are not achieved results.
“The idea isn’t to have a technology that is cheaper at scale, but one that is cheaper even during that adoption period,” Biswas said. So far, the lab demonstration has powered a lawnmower engine; installation in a commercial truck remains planned.
