Mercedes-Benz plant Düsseldorf goes green!

Project description
In the current second phase, several fuel cell industrial trucks are being researched at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Düsseldorf to determine their suitability for everyday use and are being developed with a focus on market readiness.

The research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport (BMVI , today BMDV) is investigating the conversion of battery-powered industrial trucks, e.g. forklifts, to fuel cells and is testing this in a pilot project that will run for several years.

Fuel cells use hydrogen as a fuel and combine the advantages of a diesel, such as operating hours and refueling infrastructure, with those of an electric drive, such as zero emissions and low noise.

The SRH University of Applied Sciences in North Rhine-Westphalia was commissioned to provide scientific support and is using these findings, among other things, to carry out a model and scenario calculation in which the conversion of further plant sections or the entire plant are considered.

Already since 2014, two fuel cell forklifts from the 1st project phase in long-term use, 2020 were in the 2nd phase purchased another 8 industrial trucks.

The service station manufacturer Linde Gas has built a new refueling infrastructure for the project, which includes a new indoor dispenser. For this purpose, the system technology of the dispenser was installed on the roof of the building and the tap point alone was set up in the hall. This means that the supply line is only filled with hydrogen during the refueling process. This new development means a simplification of the approval procedure for the operating permit of the entire installation of the service station.

With two stand-on tractors and eight counterbalanced trucks with fuel cells of different weight classes, industrial trucks from Linde MH were selected. These are equipped with fuel cell systems from the company Plug Power. The portfolio can be used to map almost the entire intralogistics of an OEM plant.