The garbage-gulping Mr. Fusion from “Back to the Future” was pure fiction, but the flux capacitor that powered Doc Brown’s flying DeLorean is real. NASA made it. The space agency licenses it. And hydrogen-powered trucks might benefit from it.
A license like no other
“I actually have a license for the flux capacitor. How many people can say that?” Michael Kramer, founder of startup Novadev, told me. “The only one who’s made a lot of money on this program so far is my patent attorney. He got paid a lot of money to write up a document for a license with the words flux capacitor on it.”
Like it did 58 years ago when it shared Apollo fuel cell technology with General Motors for use in the experimental 1966 fuel cell-powered Electrovan, NASA is commercializing its Cryogenic Flux Capacitor to learn from others what it can apply to space travel.
Seeking a better way to store hydrogen
The chemistry-based technology that Novadev calls FLUXpac literally makes jumpy, free-floating hydrogen molecules sticky.
“Picture frost on a sponge,” Kramer said. “The areas in between the walls of the sponge have gas in them. So the system always has gas under pressure. If you want to create more gas, you put a little bit of heat in and it causes those molecules to pop off and jump off as gas. The more heat you put in, the faster it goes.”
A FLUXpac is fueled with liquid hydrogen, which is quickly absorbed under moderate pressure, about 116 pounds per square inch.
“It’s not like cryo-compression that’s under really high pressure where if something goes wrong, you’re spraying potentially liquid or gaseous hydrogen out,” he said.
Nothing comes out when a FLUXpac is cracked open because the liquid is absorbed and held in place until released by a heat exchanger using waste heat from some part of the vehicle like a fuel cell. Since fuel cells operate at 170 F or higher, they are difficult to cool.
A second startup funded by the first
Novadev is Kramer’s second startup. He sold his first – a maker of structural composite parts for aircraft – and plowed his proceeds into Novadev initially thinking it, too, would supply the aircraft industry. But then he redirected his efforts to ground transportation, specifically Class 8 trucks.
Whether used to power a fuel cell or to fuel an internal combustion engine, hydrogen is difficult to transport. Massive high-compression tanks either sit sidesaddle on a truck frame or are stacked on the back of the cab.
Novadev’s idea, yet to be tried on a truck, is to fit the FLUXpac in the space between the front and rear wheels of a 72-inch sleeper cab where the system would plug and play with existing powertrain components.
“I’ve been doing structures and systems for transportation for a long time,” Kramer said. “We’re taking the stuff we developed over the years and saying, ‘How do you integrate hydrogen storage onto a vehicle, be it a truck, an airplane or a boat?’”
Asking what the truck guys wanted
With little specific knowledge of trucking, Kramer and his vice president of business development, Rick Bartz, asked Paccar Inc. what it would need to embrace hydrogen besides near-term plans to spec its Kenworth T680 and Peterbilt Model 579 with fuel cells made by Toyota.
The answer: a fueling system capable of 1,400 miles on a single fill, the equivalent of 220 gallons of diesel.
“Mike and his team of engineers have worked on a design of this totally integrated system – pumps, valves, all sorts of stuff to fit in this area of the 72-inch sleeper,” Bartz said.
A long-haul application is the sweet spot. Nikola and Hyundai have more hydrogen fuel cell trucks – all daycabs – operating than all OEMs combined. They travel 400 to 500 miles between fill-ups. Some battery-electric trucks are approaching that. The Tesla Semi is already there.
“There’s all these people saying they’re going to give truck operators 300 or 500 miles [of hydrogen driving range.] We went to dealership[s]. They said they couldn’t give away a truck with that short of a range,” Kramer said.
“There’s a lot of hydrogen people telling truck guys what they can live with, which is great until the truck guys say that’s not what they want. The truck guys said, ‘If you can live within the real estate that’s in between the front wheel and the back wheel underneath the cab and above the ground, we love you.’”
Only testing so far
Kramer is in no hurry to get FLUXpac to market. Just getting Department of Transportation certification could take 18 months.
“Sticking it on a truck is secondary to doing all the testing you really need to do to show that you can get it certified,” he said. “I come out of the airplane [industry.] Building the airplane first and seeing how it goes is never a good thing.”
Verne builds its first cryo-compressed hydrogen truck
Speaking of supercold and compressed hydrogen (referenced above) startup Verne has completed its first heavy-duty Class 8 truck powered by cryo-compressed hydrogen (CcH2).
The CcH2 fuel storage system maximizes hydrogen storage density, increasing vehicle range while decreasing vehicle weight and storage system cost. It is a dual-fuel prototype that also runs on diesel.
The truck uses Diesel Tech Industries’ Guardian Hydrogen Diesel System, a retrofit of a traditional diesel engine to enable the vehicle to run on a diesel-hydrogen blend. Verne describes the system as a bridge technology for the trucking industry, allowing fleets to try hydrogen fueling and drive without investing in a new fleet of trucks.
Drive testing of the truck in advance of multiple commercial pilots will begin soon, Verne said.
Briefly noted …
While investor anger is about all that’s left of TuSimple in the U.S., co-founder Mo Chen remains the de facto sole voting voice at the one-time leader in autonomous trucking.
Hyliion Holdings shares are up 342% from a year ago when the startup mothballed a natural gas-electric powertrain to focus on its fuel-agnostic Karno stationary generator technology.
Mack Trucks is offering virtual tours of its trucks, with dedicated product specialists providing one-on-one Mack Live Tour walk-arounds of its truck models.
Achim Puchert will succeed Karin Rådström as head of Mercedes-Benz Trucks Dec. 1. He will also lead the Europe and Latin America regions of the Daimler Truck brand.
Hyzon reduced its cash burn in the third quarter and began to raise money through a direct offering of stock and an at-the-market stock sale program.
Truck Tech Episode No. 91: Honing the training to sell Volvo’s new Class 8 VNL flagship
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading and watching. Click here to subscribe and get Truck Tech delivered to your email on Fridays. And catch the latest episodes of the Truck Tech podcast and video shorts on the FreightWaves YouTube channel. Send your feedback on Truck Tech to Alan Adler at [email protected].
