Hydrogen fuel pioneer ULEMCo has completed its first hydrogen dual-fuel conversion using HVO rather than diesel.

The hydrogen dual-fuel conversion is said to showcase best-in-class ‘environmental sustainability’

The waste collection truck for Keenan Recycling is said to showcase best-in-class ‘environmental sustainability’ by combining the use of hydrogen to reduce tailpipe emissions with HVO as a ‘drop-in’ renewable fuel.

Produced from waste material such as recycled vegetable oil, HVO – or hydrotreated vegetable oil – is an alternative to regular diesel and can be sustainable if it is produced from a waste-derived feedstock that does not contribute to deforestation.

ULEMCo says the conversion shows that hydrogen dual-fuel can work equally well with diesel or the non-fossil fuel HVO, giving the opportunity to address both direct tailpipe CO2 emission reduction from the hydrogen (typically 30%), along with the use of a sustainable fuel that can avoid up to 90% of net CO2 emissions.

It also said the combo opens up the opportunity for negative carbon solutions.

Amanda Lyne, managing director of ULEMCo, commented: “Hydrogen is recognised as an important part of the solution to decarbonise the UK economy in the transport and construction sectors where electrification is difficult to achieve. We are looking forward to seeing yet another customer make use of hydrogen in a real-world application, and actually save significant carbon emissions now.”

The waste truck will go into operation with Keenan at the end of this month and will be located in Aberdeen where there is an existing hydrogen refuelling infrastructure supplied by electrolytic production, creating so-called green hydrogen. This will also enable Keenan to roll out scaled fleet-wide conversions.

“We believe this is the first HVO / hydrogen dual-fuel truck operating in the UK,” stated Grant Keenan, managing director at Keenan Recycling. “Following the Aberdeen trial, we plan to include hydrogen increasingly in our transport road map.”