IT Home News on February 10, Mercedes-Benz Trucks (IT Home Note: formerly Daimler Trucks) and Linde Engineering announced a partnership to launch the SLH2 standard, a refueling technology for supercooled liquid hydrogen, and they have opened this technology to anyone who wants to use it.
Compared to gaseous hydrogen, supercooled liquid hydrogen (SLH2) has higher storage density, longer range, faster refueling, lower cost and superior energy efficiency, and its operating costs and infrastructure investment are about one-fifth and one-half, respectively, of gaseous hydrogen.
According to reports, the first public SLH2 hydrogen refueling station was completed in Wörth, Germany, and it takes about 10 to 15 minutes to fill up a Mercedes-Benz GEN2 truck, and can eventually achieve a range of more than 1,000 kilometers. Daimler Trucks hopes to make SLH2 a common refueling standard for hydrogen-powered trucks and make the technology available to all interested parties via the ISO standard.
This new process uses a new, innovative SLH2 pump that slightly increases the pressure on liquid hydrogen compared to conventional liquid hydrogen (LH2). In this way, conventional hydrogen is converted into supercooled liquid hydrogen (SLH2), which can be safely refueled with minimal energy loss during the refueling process.
Compared to conventional liquid or gaseous hydrogen solutions, SLH2 offers improved performance while making operation easier. The lack of data transmission between the refueling station and the vehicle is said to have further reduced the complexity of the refueling process, while the refueling capacity has been significantly increased, with the pilot refueling station being able to fill up to 400 kilograms of liquid hydrogen per hour.