Dhaliwal, Jashandeep Singh (2017) Assessment of the potential of hydrogen fueled vehicles in agriculture. Coursework Masters thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
This case study was aimed at the assessment of the potential of hydrogen fueled vehicles in agriculture. In the contemporary society that we are overwhelmed by fierce competition, there is a growing concern for sustainability in energy resources utilization and environment. The enhanced utilization rate of fossil fuels has forced the community to take necessary contingency steps to counter the adverse impacts of depletion of the resources on the environmental sustainability. To meet the future energy demands, new alternative resources are needed to be researched upon, among which hydrogen is one of the promising energy resources which can be utilized as a fuel for different types of vehicles. Therefore, to initiate this case study, various research papers and journals were reviewed to understand the level of research work done in the field of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles with the objective to determine loop holes and comparison factors used to convert different conventional vehicles to hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, which further were used in this case study to determine the feasibility of use of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in agriculture. For this case study, conventional tractor was considered as vehicle used in agriculture, for which different research papers were reviewed to understand the conversion factors used in transformation of a conventional tractor into electric tractor, thereby, indicating the feasibility of conversion of a conventional tractor into hydrogen fuel cell tractor as the only difference between the electric tractor and hydrogen fuel cell tractor was that the electric tractor is run by battery operated drive train and the hydrogen fuel cell with electric motor is used to run the drive hydrogen fuel cell tractor. The different parameters used in this case study to assess the potential of the use of hydrogen fuel cell tractor were determined by utilizing the geometric ratio of the parameters of the conventional and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Though, this assessment revealed that the cost of converting a conventional tractor into hydrogen fuel cell tractor is almost five times greater than that of conventional tractor, which can be compensated by increasing the production of the hydrogen fuel cell tractors at bulk capacity, however the greenhouse gas emissions, fuel consumption, and fuel price has significantly declined as compared with that of the traditional tractor, which implies that a full-scale research work on the use of hydrogen fuel cell tractors in the agricultural field would fetch a considerable percentage of share in the future agricultural machinery market. Following points were concluded in this research project:
- Hydrogen fuel can be liquefied and stored at high pressure after taking some precautionary measures while designing the vehicle.
- Performance characteristics of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle were found to be convincingly better than that of conventional vehicle.
- Performance characteristics of agricultural machinery with electrical power train (tractor) were found to be significantly good.
- Economic viability of hydrogen fuel cell agricultural machinery would be significantly poor in initial production stages, which can be improved upon the demand and mass scale production of the same.
- A significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be observed with the replacement of fossil fuel powered vehicle with the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
- The losses accommodated in the power train in hydrogen fuel cell agricultural machinery will be considerably lower than that of the conventional fossil fuel agricultural machinery.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Coursework Masters) |
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| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address. |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Current - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - No Department (1 Jul 2013 -) |
| Supervisors: | Chen, Guangnan |
| Qualification: | Master of Engineering Sciences (Agricultural Engineering) |
| Date Deposited: | 30 Jun 2026 06:06 |
| Last Modified: | 07 Jul 2026 23:49 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Agriculture, hydrogen, hydrogen fueled vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, environmental sustainability, |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/53211 |
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