H2Cool Prelude to power refrigerator trucks on hydrogen

Heavy vehicles are considered an ideal place to start with hydrogen mobility. Several companies are working to introduce hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks. However, In Germany, a new project, ‘H2Cool Prelude’, has been kicked off to look into powering refrigerated trucks on hydrogen fuel cell technology.

H2Cool Prelude is a collaboration project between the Institute for Maritime Economics and Logistics (ISL), Brussels & Maass Logistik (a forwarding company), Clean Logistics (truck converting company), Frosta (frozen food company), Akquinet Port Consulting (software company), an association H2BX (Hydrogen for the Bremerhaven Region) and the Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences.

The project’s end-users will the forwarding company Brussels & Maass Logistik and the frozen food company Frosta. The project will be studying ways to transform a refrigerated truck’s internal combustion engine to fuel cell-based technology to help reduce emission. The results will then be applied in the next stage, which would be retrofitting a refrigerated truck.

Dr Nils Meyer-Larsen, project manager, ISL, said, “The application of fuel cell and hydrogen technology for refrigerated transport is an extremely innovative research approach.”

The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the Applied Environmental Research (AUF) program.