Siemens’ £160m wind turbine factory in Hull has brought significant investment in the wind energy sector to the region. Does it signal the beginning of the end for fossil fuels? And what does it mean for the logistics industry?
It is now completely ordinary to see panels on your neighbours’ roof soaking up solar energy, just as we are getting used to looking out to sea and seeing a wind farm on the horizon. This is likely to be due, in part, to high profile figures making pledges to use more renewable energy sources and encouraging the population to follow suit.
Many big brands have recently been promising that by 2025, 100% of purchased electricity will come from renewable sources. Giant beer producer, Anheuser-Busch InBev, has said that in eight years your cold Budweiser, Stella Artois or Corona will be made with renewable energy, such as wind or solar power.
By doing so they will reduce their carbon footprint by 30% – equivalent to removing 500,000 cars from the road! Coca Cola and IKEA are among the other companies pledging to go 100% renewable.
Hydrogen fuel cells
While businesses across the globe are being urged to reduce their usage of fossil fuels and look for alternative ways of using energy, the closest the materials handling industry has come to a green source of energy is the use of hydrogen fuel cells to power forklifts.
It was recently announced that South Africa are to make more hydrogen fuel cell forklifts in a bid to use clean energy, but although there’s a lot of hydrogen on the surface of the planet, most of it exists in chemical compounds such as crude oil and water. This means that in order to produce enough to power the world’s vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells need to be produced industrially, a process that means as much as 95% of hydrogen would be produced by burning fossil fuels. Still, there a number of not-so-popular methods that could be the future of renewable energy to help power forklifts as well as the rest of the globe.
Best Foot Forward
Piezoelectricity is a method of producing energy from pressure. Pioneering companies such as PaveGen are using
this concept in floor tiles, so that people walking around or dancing produce enough electricity to run the shopping centre or nightclub they are in. Each PaveGen floor tile is equipped with a wireless API that transmits real-time movement data analytics, whilst directly producing power when and where it is needed. As pedestrians walk across the system, the weight from their footsteps causes generators to vertically displace, resulting in the radial motion creating energy through electro-magnetic induction. A nightclub in Rotterdam is making use of this technology too, but electric dance moves don’t come cheap, the club’s 270-square-foot floor cost around $257,000!
Body Heat
Stockholm’s Central Station is making use of those sweaty rush hours and conserving body heat to warm an office block not far from the station. The Central Station’s ventilation system is fitted with heat exchangers, allowing the excess body heat to be converted to hot water before being pushed into the building’s heating system. As well as being a green renewable energy source, the system has lowered the energy bill by as much as 25% for the office block.
Nevertheless, it has been said that the system works well in Sweden due to their cold winters, and the cost and benefits can depend on the climate as well as the price of energy.
Transistor Breakthough
Scientists at the University of Cambridge have recently discovered a new transistor design that could mean ultra-low power applications such as wearable devices and implantable electronics no longer need to be powered by batteries.
The new design uses a similar method to a computer in sleep mode, using a tiny ‘leak’of electrical current to function. Compared to water dripping from a faulty tap, the current is formed from contact between the metal and semiconducting components of a transistor, a characteristic that engineers usually try to avoid. Although transistors have had this ability for years, this is the first time the current has been effectively captured and used practically.
Drawing energy from an AA battery based on this design, it has been said, would make it last for a billion years.
Methane Cow Backpacks
According to the UN, 18% of the total release of greenhouse gases is down to agriculture, and cattle are a big contributor to this number. Methane is 23 times more harmful to the environment than CO2, and one cow releases 70 to 120 kgs of methane on average per year. With 1.5 billion of them around the globe, that’s a lot of harmful greenhouse gas. Researchers in Argentina have developed a backpack that collects the cow methane, purifying and compressing it for use in generating electricity.
Try not to get too excited though, while it might sound like ‘cowpower’ is the newest form of renewable energy, it’s still just in the concept stage.
What it all means for MHE…
The piezoelectricity and body heat concepts may not be ideal to power materials handling equipment, but if busy facilities started to harvest the energy from pressure and warmth produced by the employees, it’s possible businesses could be saving money while protecting the planet from green-house gases in the future.
It is somewhat unlikely we’ll see the next generation of forklift trucks being powered by tiny electrical current leaks or cow emissions. What we can say is that the direction of travel appears to be well established, if not for the planet’s sake, then for cost, health and security of energy supply reasons. What’s more the renewable energy activities in Hull together with these new discoveries pave the way for new research projects that might one day provide a green source of energy powerful enough to fuel forklifts and distribution centres worldwide. In the meantime, Windsor Hull can offer advice on equipment with low emissions and other energy-saving benefits.
[Featured image credit: www.siemens.com/press]
Can supercharged lithium iron phosphate batteries bring electric forklifts…
The UK electric forklift market has gained ground in recent years, but its fair to say that the much heralded switch to battery power has largely stayed flat over the past few decades.
Our love affair with the internal combustion engine has meant that for outdoor use at least, diesel and LPG remain top dog. All that, may be about to change.
Battery technology has continued to advance at a rapid rate. Fronius chargers are growing in popularity and now lithium ion batteries are making headway, boosted no doubt by the success of electric cars from the likes of Tesla and Honda, and the growing popularity of electric vans and buses. Other lithium ion battery products are now in mass production and are used in industrial products by major corporations including Black and Decker’s DeWalt brand, the Fisker Karma, Daimler, Cessna and BAE Systems.
As ever, battery charging remains a sticking point for forkift users. Opportunity charging, i.e. the ‘topping up’ of batteries over a short period, causes more harm than good. Anything under 4 hours for a forklift battery is a waste of time, all it does is warm/cook the battery and invalidate the warranty.
Most batteries require much longer to charge, a factor not helped in lithium ion’s case by low electrical conductivity. This problem however has been overcome with the help of the letter “R” – coating the lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO 4) particles with conductive materials such as carbon allows the ions to move more easily within the battery.
Scientists at MIT discovered that by coating lithium iron phosphate particles in a glassy material called lithium pyrophosphate, ions also move faster than in other batteries. Such technology could reduce the weight and size of the batteries and dramatically improve recharging times. A small prototype battery cell has been developed that can fully charge in 10 to 20 seconds, compared with six minutes for standard battery cells, and leading to the prospect of a new dawn in the electric truck market.
Doosan held it’s latest ‘Global Business Forum’ this year in Edinburgh, with former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and Justin Yifu Lin, former Senior Vice President of the World Bank attending.
Prominent speakers included Joan Ogden, Professor at the University of California, Davis, and a specialist in the economics of hydrogen and alternative energy technology; and Gita Gopinath, Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Each presentation was followed by a Q&A session with more than 50 guests, comprising representatives of pre-eminent companies, leaders in the energy industry and CEOs of world-class financial groups from around the world.
Also attending were Gene Sperling, former Director of the U.S. National Economic Council (NEC); Shri Rajiv Mehrishi, Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, India; and Amitabh Kant, Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, India.
Doosan will shortly be launching an extended range of pallet trucks, which will include some unusual products such as this stainless steel version. Scissorlifts, low profile and digital weigh scale hand pallet trucks are also in the pipeline.
The British Industrial Truck Association (BITA) has established a new academy for the training of forklift engineers, citing the ‘immense career potential that awaits today’s apprentices’.
Windsor is currently taking on a new batch of future engineers, having established our own in-house facility, the Windsor Training Academy.
The BITA Academy also offers both a three-year Higher Apprenticeship qualification including an exclusive quality assured certificate, and an Advanced Level Apprenticeship qualification, achieved during a fourth year of study.
The trend for hybrid machines continues with JLG’s latest articulating boom lift. The H340AJ is a four-wheel, AC direct electric drive boom lift unlike any machine on the market.
Four individually controlled drive motors provide four-wheel drive and exceptional off-roading, on par with its diesel counterpart. A smaller diesel engine with direct electric drive means less fuel consumption, less noise and less environmental impact.
The variable-speed motors operate smoothly and quietly, and feature proportional control, allowing a smooth, gradual transition from start to maximum travel speed and anything in between.
There was a time when lifting to 10m was the limit for most reach trucks in the warehouse. Not any more.
Today reach trucks not only have the stability to raise a tonne up to 12.75 metres but are capable of lifting beyond 13 metres as well. This increase in lift height and capacity in a wide aisle storage solution enables an additional level of storage to be added where roof clearance allows.
The Atlet Tergo UHX was the first reach truck to offer this level of performance. The benefits of such a high reach truck doesn’t just mean storing more at greater heights, it also means the freedom to put away heavy pallets at higher levels, not simply at floor locations.
The associated time and cost savings can also mean the need for relocation is lessened. “Reconfiguring your facilities to make better use of the height you already have avoids the expense and inconvenience of extending, moving elsewhere or building new facilities,” says Atlet.
Our friends at Kalmar have entered the record books thanks to the remarkable heavy lift capabilities of its latest reachstacker, named Super Gloria.
The reachstacker lifted a steel component weighing over 100 tonnes in front of an invited audience at Kalmar’s multi-assembly unit in Lidhult, Sweden.
The new DRG1000-92 ZXS reachstacker range is the world’s largest industrial reachstacker in Kalmar’s hugely successful Gloria range. It boasts a completely new design, developed to meet customer’s critical specifications with lift capacities up to 120 tonnes depending on application. The Super Gloria model has been augmented with a specially raised cab to enhance visibility and a wheelbase of 9.25m to provide maximum stability.
Stefan Johansson, Director, Sales and Marketing, Kalmar Reachstackers and Empty Container Handlers, said,”Lidhult is the home of Kalmar reachstackers. This small village, deep in the forests of Småland in southern Sweden, serves as the product development centre for Kalmar mobile equipment. Given the local involvement in developing this world record-breaking machine, it is fitting that the team involved share in making a little history.”
The latest Kalmar reachstackers, empty container handlers and forklift trucks are now part of the Windsor product portfolio.
Windsor partner, MKM Building Supplies, has opened its 40th branch in Glasgow. The company is looking to extend its branch network to all corners of the UK, with plans for six new branches to be operational within 12 months. Chief executive, David Kilburn, said to expect more major milestones for the Hull-based company: “It is incredibly exciting to be opening our 40th branch, particularly in such a great city as Glasgow… our plan is to ensure we are operating in many more of those in the future.”
JLG’s 10MSP mobile stock picker is still one of the more popular ways to carry out simple facilities management tasks. Here’s one of the many positive reviews we’ve received from Sunderland technology company, Heat Trace … “Thank you for your on going support. Since using the 10MSP unit in our warehouse we have found the unit to be an excellent machine, reliable and would have no hesitation in recommending it.”
