Linde tweaks fuel cell project with BMW
BMW has been operating four tugger trains and five forklift trucks with fuel-cell hybrid drives from Linde Material Handling at its facility in Leipzig, Germany.
The trucks have been in operation for around a year and in the last few months, technical adaptations have been made, which have improved the reliability of the trucks.
“The industrial trucks with fuel-cell hybrid drives used for parts supply in the body shop of the BMW plant in Leipzig, assume the same transport tasks as their lead-acid-battery counterparts in other parts of the plant,” says Hannes Schöbel, product manager for Innovative Drives at Linde MH. “It is our declared aim to further optimise the trucks and develop the technology used in industrial trucks with the knowledge gained from this project.”
“The Linde E25 HL and Linde E35 HL trucks used in Leipzig—with load capacities of 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes respectively—feature a newly developed 80-volt fuel-cell system. Since the beginning of the project, we have made gradual truck optimisations with regard to the forklift trucks,” reports Mark Hanke, head of the Industrial Truck Design Department at Linde MH. This has included, for example, updates to the internal software of the fuel cells.
“Information on the daily use of the trucks by BMW in Leipzig is extremely valuable to us, and supplements test runs at our own test site,” continues Hanke.
The Institute for Materials Handling, Material Flow and Logistics at the Technical University of Munich has documented the effect these optimisations have had.
Furthermore, the project has resonated well with other interested parties. “Lots of customers have been asking us about these trucks, and many would like to see them in action at the BMW plant in Leipzig,” reports Schöbel. “We will soon be delivering three more fuel-cell-powered industrial trucks to customers in the automotive and logistics industries.”
The BMW group, Linde Material Handling and the Institute for Materials Handling, Material Flow and Logistics at the Technical University of Munich received a grant approval from the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure in the summer of 2013 for the construction of a fleet of hydrogen-powered forklift trucks and tugger trains.
The grant for the research project (which will run until April 2016) was awarded as part of the National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Innovation Programme (NIP), and amounts to 2.9 million euro.
