Big leaps in Hydrogen Trucking for Volvo and Daimler

Powered by a cellcentric fuel-cell system and equipped with a liquid hydrogen fuel tank system, the run started Monday 25th September in the afternoon at Mercedes-Benz Truck’s Customer Center in Woerth am Rhein and finished on Tuesday morning 26th September in Germany’s capital city Berlin. The truck completed the run fully loaded and a gross combined vehicle weight of 40 tons under real-life conditions,

... Ahead of the run, the Mercedes-Benz GenH2 Truck was fueled with liquid hydrogen at Daimler Truck’s filling station at the company’s development and testing centre in Woerth. The hydrogen supplied by Air Liquide is of renewable origin, as it has been produced from biomethane with guarantees of origin. During the refuelling process, cryogenic liquid hydrogen at minus 253 degrees Celsius was filled into two 40 kg tanks mounted on either side of the truck chassis. Thanks to the particularly good insulation of the vehicle tanks, the hydrogen can be kept at temperature for a sufficiently long time without active cooling. Both tanks were sealed before the start of the #HydrogenRecordRun by TÜV Rheinland.

Daimler Truck prefers liquid hydrogen in the development of hydrogen-based drives. In this aggregate state the energy carrier has a significantly higher energy density in relation to volume compared to gaseous hydrogen. As a result, more hydrogen can be carried, which significantly increases the range and enables comparable performance of the vehicle with that of a conventional diesel truck.