MIT Startup Says It Can Convert Diesel Trucks to Cheaper Hydrogen Power. See It at Disrupt

Diesel is expensive and polluting, and LNK Energies says it has devised a way to replace it with hydrogen while lowering the price of diesel.

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Diesel fuels everything from transportation to agriculture, and with prices hitting record highs in recent weeks, governments around the world are scrambling to contain the effects.

For now, that means releasing the fuel from reserves, but in the coming years, the answer may be a new technology from an MIT startup called LNK Energies.

LNK has developed a way to convert existing heavy-duty trucks from diesel to hydrogen, while protecting operators from price spikes caused by geopolitical instability such as the war in Iran. "If you look at the total cost of ownership of a Class 8 truck, it's 13 percent cheaper than diesel," Alexis Hoin, chief technology officer at LNK Energies, told TechCrunch. (Class 8 is the heaviest category of trucks, including big rigs.)

Auto companies have explored the use of hydrogen in long-haul transportation, as recharging a hydrogen tank is faster than recharging the massive batteries needed by trucks. But transporting hydrogen to refueling stations is challenging, and the pressure tanks needed to store it in trucks are large and expensive.

The LNK approach is to chemically transfer the hydrogen to another compound. Liquid organic hydrogen carriers, or LOHCs, are liquids that can absorb and later release hydrogen, and they have been widely studied, but mostly for transporting large amounts of hydrogen from refineries to fueling stations. The equipment needed to separate the hydrogen from the LOHC, known as a reactor, was too large to fit on a truck.

"A lot of the reactors that LOHC companies have today are really big. They're the size of a shipping container," Huynh said. "We've basically shrunk it down to the size of a mini fridge."

Moving the reactor on a truck saves energy. When hydrogen is stored in a truck, it must be pressurized to more than 11,000 psi (800 bar), roughly 800 times the pressure of normal air, and it takes a lot of energy to push it. Since LNK fuel carries hydrogen in liquid form and releases it when needed, this step is eliminated. Sayandeep Biswas, co-founder and CEO of LNK Energies, told TechCrunch: "We're eliminating the expensive compression step."

In the LNK system, once the hydrogen is released on the truck, it can be burned in a conventional internal combustion engine, like today's diesel trucks, with just a few modifications. The company uses the engine's waste heat to help power the on-board reactor. Or if the carrier wants to eliminate combustion gas emissions entirely, it could instead use fuel cells that convert hydrogen into electricity to power electric motors.

LOHC can be stored in a traditional fuel tank and dispensed like diesel using pumps. "The whole hydrogen infrastructure doesn't need to exist. It's just a standard diesel station," Biswas said.

Biswas and Huynh have a demonstration reactor working in the lab that can power an engine from a lawnmower. In 18 months, they plan to install a larger version on a commercial truck.

The trucks will cost more up front, but promise to be cheaper to run. The two are confident they can get diesel down to $6.50 a gallon after producing 50 to 100 trucks. None of their projections include government subsidies. "The idea is not to have a cheaper technology at scale, but a technology that is cheaper even in that adoption period," Biswas said.

LNK will be live on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday, October 13-15 as part of our Startup Battlefield competition. Join us in San Francisco and take part in the action.

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Tim de Chant is a senior weather reporter at TechCrunch. He has written for a wide range of publications, including Wired magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica, The Wire China, and NOVA Next, for which he is editor.

De Chant also teaches at MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing, and was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018, during which he studied climate technologies and explored new business models for journalism. He received his PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BA in environmental studies, English, and biology from St. Olaf College.

You can contact or confirm with Tim by emailing him at [email protected].

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