ULEMCo is converting 20 Glasgow City Council vehicles to hydrogen duel fuel, its largest single deployment to date.

The company will convert a mixture of existing and new vehicles, including gritters, to hydrogen dual fuel before winter.

Based on the gritters’ normal duty cycles, around a third of the energy used is expected to come from hydrogen, resulting in the same proportion of emissions being saved.

Once converted, the vehicles can operate on diesel, hydrogen or a mixture of both.

The City Council is in the process of securing ‘green hydrogen’ for the fleet to refuel. It is also expected that other air quality emissions like NOx will be greatly reduced compared with the base vehicle.

“The environmental impact of large diesel powered utility vehicles is very high in city centres”, says Amanda Lyne, managing director of ULEMCo. “We are delighted to support Glasgow City Council in its ambition to become Britain’s first zero net carbon city, and help to ensure that its entire fleet of 2000 vehicles is carbon free by the end of the decade.”

A two-year trial to understand the feasibility of using hydrogen-powered trucks recently concluded that the current refuelling infrastructure is insufficient.

ULEMCo converted a fleet of vehicles to hydrogen dual-fuel as part of the Low Emission Freight and Logistics Trial (LEFT) project. The vehicles managed to utilise hydrogen fuel between 25% and 40% of the time.

Four refuse trucks, a road sweeper, a patient transport vehicle, four panel vans and a refrigerated van were converted to hydrogen dual fuel. They covered nearly 37,000 miles and used 1619kgs of hydrogen. It is estimated that the vehicles emitted 14 fewer tonnes of CO2 while running on hydrogen.

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