Loading...
Technical and Economic Analysis of Fuel Cells for Forklift Applications
Metzger, Nathan Li, Xianglin
Metzger, Nathan
Li, Xianglin
Citations
Altmetric:
Abstract
This study compared the life cycle cost (LCC) of LiFePO4 battery, proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), and direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) as the main power source of electric forklifts. The battery showed the lowest LCC over 10 years ($14,935) among the three power sources, thanks to the significant price reduction in recent years. The fuel cost accounted for more than 70% of the total LCC of PEMFC ($36,682) when the hydrogen price was $8/kg. The LCC of DMFC ($41,819) with the current performance and catalyst loading (0.2 W/cm2, 6 mgPGM/cm2) was 12% higher than the LCC of PEMFC ($36,682). The LCC of DMFC ($25,050) will be 28.9% lower than that of PEMFC if both PEMFC and DMFC reach the target performance and catalyst loading set by the U.S. Department of Energy (1 W/cm2, 0.125 mgPGM/cm2 for PEMFC and 0.3 W/cm2, 3 mgPGM/cm2 for DMFC). The smaller fleet size will significantly increase the LCC of PEMFC due to the high cost of hydrogen fueling and storage infrastructure. For forklift users with less than 50 units, which account for 80% of forklift users, DMFC will be even more cost-effective due to the significantly lower cost of methanol infrastructure.
Description
Date
2022-05-26
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Collections
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Batteries, Fuel cells, Fuels, Hydrogen, Power
Citation
Metzger N, Li X. Technical and Economic Analysis of Fuel Cells for Forklift Applications. ACS Omega. 2022 May 26;7(22):18267-18275. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.1c07344. PMID: 35694482; PMCID: PMC9178713.