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14
June 2023
By Leigh Collins
Batteries are a better option than hydrogen for mining
trucks, say iron-ore miners Fortescue and Rio Tinto
The opinion is surprising as Fortescue boss Andrew
Forrest is one of the world’s most bullish advocates of H2, and
off-road vehicles are often said to be a good use case for hydrogen
![](images/images_06_15_2023/pic2.jpg)
Off-road vehicles such as mining trucks, are often touted as a
sensible use case for green hydrogen due to the difficulty in charging
batteries in remote areas a long way from power transmission lines.
But even one of hydrogen’s most bullish advocates, billionaire Andrew
Forrest’s iron-ore mining company Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) — which
includes green H2 developer Fortescue Future Industries — believes
that batteries will be a better option for the industry’s haul trucks.
“We do believe that certainly this decade, batteries in trucks are
going to be the most favourable solution, maybe not in every single
haul, but for most haul routes,” FMG’s director of decarbonisation,
Christiaan Heyning, told the Energy and Mines Australia Summit in
Perth, Australia, today (Wednesday).
“The biggest reason for that is if you don’t use direct
electrification... it would need to have hydrogen. Hydrogen requires
triple [the] amount of power to do it, so you need a lot more
generation capacity, a lot more land disturbance, and more
transmission, so there’s a lot of inefficiencies.”
John Mulcahy, principal adviser on surface mining and
technology at Australia’s largest iron-ore miner, Rio Tinto, also told
the conference that hydrogen was a less efficient option than
batteries for mining trucks.
“Hydrogen at the moment isn’t our preference, but it doesn’t
mean it is dead by any means,” he said.
“What we are looking at primarily is the efficiency of the cycle, to
go from charging and discharging a battery and powering a truck,
versus powering an electrolyser, creating hydrogen, liquefying and
compressing it and then converting it back into a fuel cell.
“The hydrogen cycle is about one-third as efficient, so our
initial view is let’s drive it with batteries because of the higher
efficiency, the lesser impact on infrastructure and distribution
systems.”
However, he did add that hydrogen could become a better option
in the future if it could be delivered to the mine, in the same way
that diesel is today.
When asked by the Australian Financial Review if Heyning’s
comments were representative of the thinking at FMG, a company
spokeswoman said that Fortescue was “technology agnostic” when it
comes to decarbonisation.
“We believe battery-electric, green hydrogen and green ammonia
will all be critical to our decarbonisation plan, and we are taking
practical steps to apply the best solution to each situation,” she
said, adding that FMG was testing prototypes of both battery-electric
and hydrogen fuel-cell haul trucks.
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