Fab phosphate

A 3 tonne ride-on counterbalance truck at a reasonable price is expected to be available by 2016, said Tobias Zierhut, head of product marketing new trucks at Linde.

Zierhut was speaking at the recent World of Material Handling event held by the manufacturer in Germany.

He added the trucks would keep the same shape and use ballast, but that smaller lighter lithium ion batteries could also lead to change sin counterbalance forklift design.

Linde also unveiled its first warehouse technology trucks to feature lithium-ion batteries at the event. As an initial step, the Linde T16 to T20 pedestrian pallet trucks will be available to order with a load capacity of between 1.6 and 2.0 tonnes from September.

The Linde system is based on lithium-ion phosphate technology. Zierhut estimates the batteries are around 4-5 times the cost of a lead acid battery.

Linde says the stand-out feature of its lithium-ion MHE is that the trucks (including control unit and electronics), battery and charger come together to form a complete system, the various components of which communicate via CAN bus.

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The company says this set-up makes it possible to harness the full potential of the system in terms of performance, and capitalise on all of the benefits offered by the new battery technology. In turn, this leads to considerable reductions in energy costs and increasing levels of productivity. At the same time, thanks to a series of precise adjustments and fine-tuning, the system complies with even the most stringent safety requirements. 

The second stage of product release is planned for early 2015. These include the Linde T16 to T20 pedestrian pallet trucks with increased battery capacity, the Linde T20 to T24 AP/SP pallet trucks with driver’s standing platform, the Linde N20 and N20 HP low-lift order pickers, and the Linde P30C and P50C tow tractors. All of these trucks are equipped with batteries offering 210 Ah or 550 Ah and an installed capacity of 3.93 kWh or 10.58 kWh.

Out of all the alternative drive types available, lithium-ion technology presents the most opportunities in the short term, says Linde.

The company sees the key benefits as:

• Unlike lead-acid batteries – which are particularly limiting when it comes to multi-shift use or applications that require significant amounts of energy – lithium-ion batteries boast an extremely high volumetric energy density. With lithium-ion batteries, twice the amount of useful energy can be stored in the same battery tray. In turn, this enables the truck to be operated for two shifts instead of just one, providing that staff use breaks as opportunities for interim charging. 

• Equipment that previously needed to be kept for replacing batteries—such as a replacement frame with roller channel—are no longer required. The same is true of the areas in warehouses that had to be accordingly allocated for this purpose; this space can now be put to other use.

• Lithium-ion batteries are significantly quicker to charge, and do not require topping up or an equalising charge after the actual charging process itself in order to protect the battery. This also saves time and energy.

• Intelligent battery chargers that engage with one another open up new means of managing and optimising battery pools, and ensure maximum availability while reducing costs for energy and handling.