Practical test in container terminal

At a container terminal in Hamburg, a test field for heavy-duty vehicles with hydrogen drives is being built. The first tractor unit is now in use.

Rain splashes on the tables, the invited guests crowd under parasols, against which the wind patters. In the container terminal Tollerort in the port Hamburger Hafen, there should be something to see today. A yellow tractor pulls up and comes to a halt on a bright blue strip in front of a gas pump. An employee is already standing by, hooks the dispenser into the tank opening and presses the start button. The process is quite unspectacular. Only a display at the pump shows how the pressure in the tank is slowly rising.

The retrofit challenge
The fact that so many people have come to the terminal is not only due to the hydrogen refueling station. Rather, it is for the overall project that so many people, among them Hamburg’s economy senator Melanie Leonhard, Christian Maaß from the BMWK (German economy ministry) and Antje Roß from NOW (German agency for hydrogen and fuel cell technology), have made the journey to Tollerort. The fuel pump and tractor unit are the first elements of a so-termed H₂ test field, on which the cluster Clean Port & Logistics is working. Test field and cluster were both funded as part of NIP (national innovation program for hydrogen and fuel cell technology), with a total of three million euros.

The company Hamburger Hafen und Logistik (HHLA) wants to use this project to find out how the terminal can be made climate-friendly. “A lot of things here at the terminal already work electrically. We want to use hydrogen in the heavy-duty sector where batteries are not sufficient,” says Karin Debacher, Head of Hydrogen Projects at HHLA, which operates the Tollerort terminal. This is not only about large loads and services, but also about “limits of an operational nature,” as HHLA CEO Angela Titzrath formulated it.

With an area of 600,000 square meters (6,458,000 sq. ft.), the Tollerort container terminal seems huge, yet it is HHLA’s smallest container terminal. It is located in the Steinwerder city district on a kind of river island, most of which it occupies. The municipal sewage treatment plant and a few smaller companies also fit on it – There is no room for expansion. It was built in the late 1970s, but little has been automated.

vlnr Karin Debacher, Leiterin Wasserstoffprojekte der HHLA; Dr. Lucien Robroek, President Technology Solutions Division bei Hyster-Yale Materials Handling; Dr. Melanie Leonhard, Senatorin für Wirtschaft und Innovation; Angela Titzrath, Vorstandsvorsitzende der HHLA; Christian Maaß, Leiter Wärme, Wasserstoff & Effizienz im BMWK; Antje Roß, Managerin Hafennetzwerke und -anwendungen bei der NOW GmbH

In a celebratory mood despite the rain (from left to right) Karin Debacher, head of hydrogen projects at HHLA, Dr. Lucien Robroek, President Technology Solutions Division at Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Dr. Melanie Leonhard, senator for economics and innovation, Angela Titzrath, chair of HHLA, Christian Maaß, head of heat, hydrogen & efficiency at the BMWK, Antje Roß, manager of port networks and applications at NOW GmbH

In the realm of giants
To manage the masses of containers arriving and being loaded, a total of 59 so-termed van carriers whizz through the terminal. They are reminiscent of the AT-AT walkers from Star Wars but travel on wheels. Their legs are so long that they can drive over containers to place another container on top or lift it down. They move up to 60 tonnes. “Some of the van carriers in Tollerort have diesel-electric drives, but pure battery operation is out of the question,” says HHLA spokeswoman Karolin Hamann. There are also so-termed reach stackers, which consist mainly of a long, strong arm. They can stack up to six containers on top of one another.

The port’s fleet of heavy goods vehicles is so exotic that you can book a port safari called the “Tour der Giganten” (tour of the giants). What the giants have in common is that they have to be efficient at all times. That’s 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. There is no time to recharge batteries. Simply purchasing more vehicles and replacing them after charging is also not an alternative. Not only would they be expensive, there is also no space for them. While HHLA’s newest terminal in Altenwerder, further south, is already running fully electric and fully automated, the port company is still looking for a solution for the existing Tollerort terminal. Hydrogen is to bring a breakthrough.

Few vehicles available
And although hydrogen is so urgently needed for high-performance vehicles in port logistics, it is nowhere near as frequently used here as in road transport. To change that, HHLA and around 40 other companies from all over the world joined forces as the cluster Clean Port & Logistics in October 2022. To the cluster belongs also Hyster-Yale. Among other things, the company manufactures tractor units and empty container stackers – vehicles that seem almost commonplace compared to the port giants. But it still doesn’t seem to be that simple:

Hyster-Yale actually wanted to make the first tractor unit available for testing as early as 2022, an empty container stacker should follow in 2023. Now the tractor unit is finally here – and was warmly applauded in Hamburg. It is powered by a fuel cell from Nuvera. Lucien Robroek, President Technology Solutions Division of Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, traveled to the opening in person. “We’re still ironing out the technology. But we will do it,” said Robroek at the celebration. The announced empty stacker is due to follow at the end of 2024 or beginning of 2025. It is similar in design to a forklift truck, but has a kind of freight elevator for containers at the front instead of a fork, which makes it a real high stacker – up to six containers on top of each other are possible.

More speed when refueling
But what is so special about refueling with hydrogen at the terminal? Alone in Germany there are nearly 100 hydrogen refueling stations. The difference to these public locations: Every minute in the port costs a lot of money. That’s why every detail must be known and every move must be right. For the first commissioning tests, cluster partners have made their vehicles available. The municipal bus company VWG Oldenburg sent one of its hydrogen buses for a test refueling; the shipping company CMB.Tech from Antwerp a truck. Now they know: In principle, the refueling station design works.

It looks like this: The hydrogen is delivered by Lhyfe in a storage tank integrated into a 20-foot container. At 380 bar, there is room for 450 kg of hydrogen. Locally, some of the hydrogen is further compressed to 550 bar and stored in a medium-pressure storage tank. The vehicles arrive at the fueling station when their pressure has dropped to around 30 bar. They are then first refueled from the trailer. And if this pressure is no longer sufficient, the fueling station automatically switches to the medium-pressure reservoir. As in the new-fangled gastronomy for water, the refueling station has two taps: one for cooled and one for uncooled hydrogen. This way, HHLA wants to find out whether refueling can be significantly accelerated with the pre-cooled hydrogen. Also details should be clarified by the tests: How long does it take to refuel in the summer heat, how long in the freezing rain? Is it best to refuel at shift changes or simply when it is necessary? Does the driver do the refueling – or is it quicker with a gas station attendant?

What comes next
Little by little, HHLA also wants to test operate its heavy-duty giants with hydrogen. In addition to Hyster-Yale, the manufacturers Konecranes, Kalmar and Gaussin also belong to the cluster Clean Port & Logistics. A schedule for the delivery of the first vehicles does not yet exist, however.

In the future, HHLA also wants to make its H₂ refueling station available to other companies that want to refuel vehicles at 350 bar. However, it is not entirely uncomplicated. They’d have to register via an app and complete a safety briefing. The HHLA security service also accompanies those wishing to refuel to the gas pump and back. Since there are already four conveniently located public hydrogen refueling stations in various directions in Hamburg, the customer base of the refueling station in the container terminal should be manageable.

For the overall project, however, this is a secondary construction site. Above all, the cluster members – including research institutions, vehicle manufacturers, hydrogen specialists and other port companies – are waiting for results that will help them advance their own developments. The focus of the partners lies in Germany; for example, the ports of Kiel and Lübeck have been integrated in the project. However, the Port of Los Angeles and Neltume Ports – an operator of 17 ports in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and the USA – are also on board. The findings from Hamburg could set a precedent worldwide.