Hydrogen Fuel Tank Storage for Mining Operations

Heavy-duty transportation, specifically trucking and mining vehicles, is one of the leading contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Verne, a cleantech startup, seeks to support the mining industry’s transition from fossil fuels to clean energy by creating high-density, lightweight hydrogen fuel tanks to power mining trucks. In order for Verne’s tanks to be used on mining vehicles, they must be stored on the vehicles in a way that: (1) is volume efficient, (2) provides enough fuel for operation, and (3) withstands the extreme loads that a truck might endure in a mining environment. Our team is developing a storage system for Verne’s tanks, intended for use on mining trucks, that meets the stated key requirements of volume efficiency, fuel efficiency, and through future work shall satisfy the high shock loading requirement. Our rack design is able to hold eight hydrogen fuel tanks, each weighing nearly 400 kilograms, while mounted in between the wheels on the side of a mining truck. Through prototyping, analysis, and simulations, our team developed a rack that has a pre-welded steel frame, providing stiffness to the overall design, as well as several modular steel components which allow the tanks to be inserted and removed without any destruction. The rack is made out of: (1) horizontal hollow square beams which resist deflection due to the weight of the tanks, (2) v-shaped side panels which mitigate deflection of the entire rack while it is cantilevered from the truck, and (3) vertical T-beams used to resist buckling and to interface with the horizontal beams and v-shaped side panels. We derived the key dimensions of each component using deflection and buckling calculations, then refined and validated them through Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulations. Additionally, we conducted scaled deflection tests on various beam geometries and compared our experimental results to those of FEA to obtain an experimental error percentage of ~8%. To account for inaccuracies in FEA, we incorporated this error percentage into our factor of safety. Because we worked with scaled down models throughout this process, we advise thorough testing on a full-scale version of this rack. This includes vibration, cyclic load, and fatigue testing to validate the prototype’s lifetime use, as well as impact testing to satisfy the high shock loading requirement.