Hydrogen produced from solar energy is the best energy carrier for heavy duty transport
This point was made by Adri Huesman, principal hydrogen technologist of Shell. Adri presented his story at the Process Systems Engineering NL Winter Symposium at Institute for Sustainable Process Technology building Amersfoort, The Netherlands. He showed that hydrogen stored at 800 bar requires less than 1 ton of extra weight for a heavy duty transport truck, while a battery would require 4 ton extra weight. Moreover, hydrogen can be quickly loaded onto the truck in a feasible way, while the battery loading needs an electrical current of 1 MWatt. Such currents will distort the electricity net, so are not feasible. The energy efficiency from electricity to transport of both systems is comparable.
Adri highlighted that the issue for hydrogen transport application is that safety procedures have to be developed. For decades, the general consensus was that an explosive cloud would not be formed when hydrogen is leaked. However, recent incidents prove that an explosive cloud can be formed. The investment cost for the loading devices and for the truck devices will come down by a factor 3 compared to present estimates due to mass production of these. With that factor 3, the economics of hydrogen look attractive.
Other presentations at the Winter Symposium were about the technical transition in the Rotterdam area from fossil crude oil refining to electricity conversion to hydrogen in the next 25 years by Andre ten Cate of ISPT, the increased performance options for Alkaline water electrolysis by prof. Thijs de Groot of TU Eindhoven, the process integration of the hydrogen market, by Martijn Kramer of Yokogawa, and the typicals of designing high pressure water electrolysis, by Marcel Beekman of Fluor.
I got the impression from this mini-conference that carbon neutrality of the heavy transport section in 2050 is hard to achieve but technically doable. The disclaimer is that I am an optimist.