The session was a part of the International Industrial Ecology Day 2023 (November 30) – the 3rd IE Day organized by the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE).
Session Chair: Valerie M. Thomas, Georgia Tech
Freight transportation, including trucking, water-borne shipping, rail and air freight, face significant decarbonization challenges. In this session we explore opportunities ranging from freight system design to green hydrogen production
Yujia Xu and Guanlin Chen, Georgia Tech
Network Deployment with Lateral Transshipments for Electric Vehicle Battery Swapping and Charging Stations
Ziqing Wu, IMT Mines Albi-Carmaux
Hyperconnected circular supply chain network design: Physical Internet principles for the Circular Economy
Sahrish Shaik and Jingze Li, Georgia Tech
Eco-Efficient Vehicle Delivery: Transitioning to Open Relay Transportation
Katundu Imasiku, Southern African Science Service Center for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management
Green Hydrogen Generation Potential in Africa
hello Zing hello Professor Thomas how are you I am great it looks like we have a good group here it’s 2 o’clock and if you’re willing you may just go ahead and okay run the session and I’ll be right beside you if needed thank you so I will start recording now it’s already started yes it’s start okay so hello everyone I’m guing a third year PhD student from IM te in Al in France and a visiting student here at Georgia Tech so it’s a pleasure for me to assist Professor to must to host this session we are welcoming you from Georgia Tech together with my colleagues the title of our session is opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emission from uh Freight Systems the there will be presentations tackling vehicle charging challenges designing transportation and supply chain Network and analyzing the potential of alternative F so these presentations collectively aim to enhance the sustainability of freid systems each presentation will last for 10 minutes and followed by brief discussion so we encourage our audience to post questions in the chat or ask them live after each presentation so let’s move on to our first first talk of the day entitled um electric vehicle battery swapping and charging station planning in hyperconnected Hub networks presented BYU and guing CH from Georgia Tech so please start whenever you are ready um hello everyone my name is Guan Lan Chen today and I will talk about electric vehicle battery swapping and charging station Stations planning in hyperconnected Hub Network first I would like to go through the current operations of battery swapping stations and vehicle charging stations currently currently the battery swapping stations have modular batteries and use automated robots to fast swap the battery the swap batteries are usually charged at the station using slow charging and can be used when incoming Vehicles when those batteries finish charging this picture here shows the map of charging stations in continental United States the pink lines are the interstates and the yellow dots are the charging stations compared to battery swapping stations the vehicle charging stations are more accessible to the public there are more than 160,000 public charging stations nowadays those stations have three types of charging ports based on voltage and types of current flow and usually are on a first come first serve basis our our objective in designing the battery swapping and charging station is to maintain High service level for all the swapping requests our plan is to not only charge the depleted batteries at the Char swapping station but also transer those batteries to other swapping stations in our hyperconnected Network to minimize the net cost so our key decisions at each battery swapping stations will be the inventory Level Trans shipment and charging scheduling our objective in designing the vehicle charging stations is to fulfill all the planned vehicle charging request and in the meantime increase access to those stations to the public different types of vehicles have different charging times when using different charging scenario in our scheduling model we will take those into consideration to increase the public access of the charging stations we will enable those charging stations to accept walk-in Vehicles when they are idle to evaluate our decision-making process we will imp Implement a simulator of hybrid EV service Hub where the vehicles have options of battery Char swapping and vehicle charging at different speeds based on the input of inbound and outbound vehicle schedule and battery level we will evaluate our strategy to see if we can shorten the vehicle throughout time while maintaining the high service level next F will talk about the planning in the logistic network uh perspective uh you muted can you hear me now yes okay great sorry for that um thanks quy hello everyone my name is eug and I will use the next few minutes to introduce you our research project for electrification in hypnologist networks as you can see in the two figures the left one indicates the cost of the level two charging per connector while the white one indicates those for the DC fast charging stations the price of the DC fast charging would cost about 10 times more expensive than the level two charging however the charging time from empty2 four using the level two charging is around 10 hours while the DC charging takes around two hours we can see there are some tradeoffs between the price and the time therefore we believe battery swapping might be a good future solution for electrification in hyper chologist networks to avoid the high cost of the fast charging station and and also the long deal time at HS when deciding on swapping at H or not we need to consider four factors firstly battery and the charging Technologies including battery size battery charging locations battery transhipments and so on and secondly Side location and sizing including the space constraints Leasing and capacity cost thirdly fet operation prit in the model we will consider rout to be fixed or flexible and it it can be managed or released to Smart charging options and lastly Market inputs and grade constraints including energy cost and Peak demand charge at different locations and also some gr constraints I will use the next few slides to show you the problem we tackle we firstly we consider Locate battery charging or swipping stations in open access Hub networks which provide Hub accessibility by enabling consolidation sorting trans shipment and cross talking and also we consider free consolidation and routing for demand flow of different origin destination pairs in other words free cost could be reduced by transporting in Consolidated Lots in hyperon Connected Hab networks like I mentioned before we are some battery swapping stations battery charging stations or integrated stations in Hub networks and we amend to centrally manage the battery inventory in the stations we assume batteries will be charged overnight and depleted or charged batteries could be transported between stations every day and and also redistribution of batteries or lateral transshipments between stations are allowed and lastly we assume free transportation and Battery trans shipment share capacity of shipment using transporting resources like trucks so that the truckload could be better utilized therefore we want to consider the localization dispatching routing and battery transshipment in the problem and we used a mixed integer program model to formulate it in objective function we want to minimize the site fixed cost capacity cost routing cost B which purchasing cost and Charing cost we have four sets of constraints including free out assignment battery inventory equality free transportation and Battery trans shipment and lastly size selection and capacity management we use a case study to illustrate outputs of our model we consider an Open Access Hub networks considering the consisting of Hub or Regional centers giving the daily demand of each origin destination pair some routes are selected and the average FL bre flow on each lat are show in the Le in the figure on the left and also some of the Hops are selected to be battery swapping stations according to the Daily demand as indicated by the orange circles in the figure on the right and some HS are selected to be the battery charging stations as indicated by the green circles in the figure across the stations selected we also plot the average charged and depleted battery flow in the network while the W of the lines indicate the number of the batteries transported on each La we can clearly see that a few locations are selected as charging stations and the hyperconnect free Transportation networks are utilized for battery trans shipments between charging stations and and the swapping stations so in summary we conclude that there are several benefits of the battery swiping stations in Hub loges networks firstly the downtime of trucks at hubs could be minimized and secondly we can avoid the high cost of the DC fast charging stations and reduce the number of charging stations utilizing the hyperconnect free transportation system certainly we can centrally ma ma manage the battery battery in stations allowing shared batteries with trans shipment fourthly collaborative Transportation help us integrate free transportation and Battery trans shipment so that resource utilization could be increased and the overall efficiency can be enhanced and lastly we can optimize the utilization of electrical resources while overcoming the limitations within the power grid as for the future research studies of design Hybrid battery charging and swiping networks with various options and devise predictive uh scenarios fors decision making and combining long-term planning with construction opportunities and lastly shared charging uh sh charging considering uh public charging locations are worth exploring that’s all for our presentation today thank you all for your time and patience please feel free to reach us at emails let’s let’s on on the slide thank you very much thank you very much V and G we saw that there’s a question in the comment here from Professor Thomas might you be able to calculate the additional cost of battery samping surely that cost something right I additional cost of the battery swapping yeah we can we can actually in um include that in our object function even though a company we don’t consider that but actually for the hyperconnect transportation system we can add the consolidation cost at each note every time when a freight or when a battery trans shipment come across at each node so we can include that in our optimization model thank you for the question right now the second question are there estimates of how much more batteries per vehicle would be needed to operate such a weapon weaping system from Jonas thank you that’s a really good question actually um because in cing our optimization model we calculate the battery purchasing cost like because we we we can see there are some tradeoffs between if we have more batteries at more inventories at each location we have less Transportation but we have more purchasing cost so we we’re handling those kind of tradeoffs but in the future we can add those kpis in our like results to see to show show you the um like the more batteries for vehicle yeah this it is a very clear KP we can include in Future Okay the third one from K have you taken into consideration that different vehicles have different capacity size how does your system ensure that swiping is done on done correctly on each station yes currently we think or we consider the tracks have St capacity and we have two variables to consider the combination of the freight and also the batteries on each TR trucks but in the future we may also consider various types of trucks but it maybe it takes more like more time to solve optimization model but it’s a good direction we can go so I may have a question here is that in the context that you mentioned on the collaborative transportation that integrates fre uh integrates Freight and also battery transfit are any specific safety requirements uh for these batteries what additional requirement should be considered for this kind of uh transportation of these dangerous goods as we can characterize the battery yeah that’s a also very good question I think um different modes of the transportation may have different specific regulation regarding to the battery trans shipment for example air transportation often have more uh straight rules to uh transport the batteries um I think currently in our model because we mainly considered uh Transportation via trucks so we actually set some restrictions on the quantity of the batteries that we can be transported and it is currently incl included in the optimization model thank you thank you for all your explanations thank you and perhaps now I will leap in as co-chair of this session in order to reintroduce uh both our session co-chair and our next speaker Zing woo she is a PhD student at IMT Minds Ali Caro in France who is uh for a few months visiting us at Georgia Tech where we have gotten to know her her talk as you can see is on hyperconnected circular supply chain Network design and harnessing the physical internet principles for the circular economy sing please go ahead thank you thank you Professor Thomas for your introduction so in this talk I will share some work that we’ve been developing during my PhD CES around hyperconnected cural supply chain Network design basically we want to harness in the physical internet principles or we can say philosophies for the circular economy I’m working with advisers from both IMT Min ALB in France and the Georgia Tech here so you may already be very very familiar with the notion of circular economy which consists of re revolutionizing the linear economy including only make use and dispos faes a set of strategies is developed under circular economy to extend the life cycle of products including products designed to last proper maintain and rep repair upgrades reuse refurbish and remanufacture recycle and finally converting waste to energy all that that aim to minimize resource input waste emission and energy leakage so there are diverse benefits of circular economy among them it can contribute to all the three dimensions of sustainability and it can also Foster business creation so we got business practitioners who were fated by this idea but they claimed that there’s a lack for the Practical guidelines to make it happen so to bring a real life example to this statement we have here electric conversion of IC Vehicles so since 2020 this operation is authorized in France what’s happening is that a client come with an old IC vehicles I see the internal combustion engine fuel Reservoir and exhaust uh pipe are removed and after that we can put the electric power train and battery pack inside and finally it get uh tested and delivered to the client as a electric car so we have been seeing some very successful business targeting Vantage and utility cars here and also some big groups like Reno is also converting one of their factories to refactory to conduct all these circular operations so we are questioning in this context how to empower startups in this sector so let’s go back to the general industrial needs if you want to do things for circular entrepreneurship we can get inspired by the classic type so six questions shall be asked while beginning a business who’s the customer what service can we provide how to deliver service how to generate Revenue how to design a product and finally how to scale up so in this work we are focusing on business scaling side so here we are actually taking uh talking about this circular supply chain Network dimensioning meaning that with the time how Network can grow and to do that we need a part of demand estimation and we are also asking questions about how can physical internet help to discover new ways of doing this kind of network design so uh why physical internet and what’s the link between physical internet and circular Supply chains to show that we have here two illustrations both are interconnected networks so in circular Supply chains we emphasize the intense exchange of materials that can be by product or waste or resources along with the circulation of money and information and in hyperconnected logistics systems we are leveraging the capacity of every stakeholder to streamline the logistics operation both are emphasizing the connectivity among diverse actors and this hyperconnected logistic system May directly help to improve the Logistics efficiency of circular Supply chains which is already a very big support to this implementation but physical internet is more than that it intends to improve the way for physical objects to be moved stored realized supplied and used that’s why this Synergy between two concepts deserve our attention so by Analyze This Synergy we are proposing a no conceptual Frameworks that we named the physical internet enabled hyperconnected Supply chains which I will presenting later on so to provide you more understanding of the physical internet we will show you some very key elements here mostly presented in this hyperconnected Logistics systems first goods are encapsulated in World standard smart grain modular containers these containers will go through the automated uh standardized and connected processes and procedures in this Logistics nodes and these nodes and also multimodal Transportation compos a logistic Network Network makes the delivery service seamless flexible and resilient finally virus logistic network will form a system of logistic network uh enabling seamless open asset sharing and flow consolidation so some keywords that we can remember here are standardization encapsulation and open open sharing so that’s the context of my research work now let’s move on to our research uh framework which aims to answer the global research question how can hyperconnected Circ Supply chains to be designed so to do this as we mentioned before we will have a block of demand estimation for this new circular business that provide us the demand scenarios and on the other side we will have our newly proposed conceptual framework which will provide us with this decision space and finally we can design our decision support system for this circular supply chain Network design and all that will be implemented on the case study that I mentioned before which is electric conversion of these cars so in the following slides I will show you some progress on each of the three blocks first the conceptual framework here we took the 10 characteristics proposed in physical internet and also the six archetypal characteristics of circular Supply chains so we brought 10 new features together to form our novel framework to answer this question how the characteristics of physical internet can help with the circular supply chain implementation and we also show some conceptual links here in this slide and I will show you one by one the proposed 10 new features so first we want products to be designed for both secularity and supply chain we want want to objects to be materialized on demand in this physical internet open production FS we want product materials and energy to be recovered as locally as possible we propose to circulate materials and products with hyperconnected listic systems we want to enable the shift from ownership to access with physical internet we want to exploit new functionalities of existing facilities we want to deploy open and hyperconnected sustainability performance monitoring and we want to create this multi-tiered framework for material and energy exchange and we want to embrace this circularity enabling Technology Innovation and finally stimulates the circular business model Innovation so that’s all the point for this uh framework and then let’s move to the demand s so we are also proposing a methodology for circular business compared to the classic demand estimation what are the specificities first they are mostly based on existing products so we are we are refurbishing upgrading some things that already exists and second they often show a huge model variety which will bring complexity to the operations and for the positioning of the problem in the L literature we find ourself at the intersection of string domains entrepreneurship new service forecasting and Market selection and uh we propose a four-fold contribution including uh we combine top down and bottom up methods including counting no and also secondary market research we are combining quantitative and qualitative analysis there’s no sales history required in this meth methods and finally we want to provide some guidance for new service develop development and Market deployment so we propos here a framework in a form of Russian law we begin with all de products on which the circular business relies and then we apply Futures such as regulations technical constraints company strategies and business models and finally we conduct this purchase intention analysis combining both multicriteria decision making techniques and clustering and finally we do something similar on the competitiveness of the company to get the demand estimation for the company so here is an example a color map showing the different level of interest that people may have according to the region of France the darker the color the more business interest may have for the residents of the region so with that we can move on to the Deion support system we got the demand data and can generate some demand scenarios we can answer the question of how internet can help uh and with that we are selecting some features so that we can testing them to see with this how the network can be designed so here inspired by this industrial case we got this network including several stages from suppliers factories deployment centers to retof centers and also recycling centers and some closed Loops the decision here we are aiming to support will be product deployment plan with which means when to launch which product the network structure meaning to decide the locations and authorize the flow of these facilities and finally the network capacity containing all this production storage recovery and transportation so that’s basically all I want to share today thank you for your attention and any comments and questions are welcome thank you thank you very much um I want to ask if there are questions um I Can Begin by asking you a question uh te which is you’ve thought about the obstacles to achieving uh implementation of this yeah what would you say uh the uh largest or key obstacle I mean actually while we were talking about some industrial Partners they were always talking about this cultural shift meaning that people uh they refuse to buy this refurbished products but they are more into buying new things so I mean maybe this one is a very important obstacle and other things are some reliability if we can re uh assure that the product is intact and can perform the same functionalities as they they are new so maybe there’s some quality issues that we need to tackle with for this kind of business that’s basically what can I can think about and thank you I will add in there um so I think this is very attractive um however another factor is how much does it cost so so a customer might be thinking how much is this going to cost as opposed to just getting either a new electric vehicle or looking for a used electric vehicle so that might be a factor also exactly exactly and I yeah Poss J maybe typing a question can speak yeah so just to mention this point because we were working with this industrial partner who’s proposing some uh retroit for all this passenger vehicles and they were proposing like 5,000 Euros comparing to 30,000 for a new car so it’s it can be very attractive in terms of price but they had problem in the industrialization process so they need to have enough uh amounts the economies of scale so that they can bring the cost down they are not yet in this at say stage thank you thank you so I will now uh continue as as some chair and um introduce our next speakers who are sarish shake and Jean Z Lee both from Georgia Tech um who have now raised their screen they will be speaking about eco-efficient vehicle delivery transitioning to open relay Transportation ecosystem thank you Professor Valerie good morning everyone today we’re going to talk about actionable models and strategies to evolve into an open relay transportation system for more sustainable vehicle delivery let’s briefly talk about about the current practices in Industry cars go from factories to local dealerships through a detailed Transportation process brand new and imported cars they wait at storage lots for pickup as you see in the first image then short trips are made by trucks directly to the dealerships while longer Journeys involve trucks to rail terminals where rails are loaded into Bev or trle rail cars so in short cars travel from the factory to dealerships either just by truck or by a combination of truck and rail depending on the distance here you see a snapshot of the extensive network of the um vehicle transportation by truck across the country as seen as in the 2022 tonnage estimates this map illustrates the density and volume of daily Transportation as you can see there are some certain corridors that show a significantly higher volume of traffic essential for understanding where our delivery networks are most concentrated and this information is pivotal as we consider how to streamline our vehicle delivery routes for efficiency and environmental sustainability now we talk about some critical challenges that um are facing the car hauling industry starting with the equipment capabilities and extending to Workforce challenges car hauling trailers present unique cargo flexibility challenges these trailers are purpose built for vehicles which inherently limits cargo adaptability and confines us to specific height and size limitations due to their multi level structure um there’s also specialized weight distribution for which these U vehicles are engineered for and these POS a risk of imbalanced loads leading to potential safety hazards if used for any other Commodities furthermore the trailer’s design contributes to operational inefficiency such as empty miles traveled without cargo this not only leads to low truckload utilization but also increases operational cost and negatively impacts the environment now addressing the car hauler Workforce challenges firstly the truck ring profession demands extensive hours and significant time away from home presenting lifestyle hurdles for many drivers Additionally the industry is also struggling with low retention rates and a high turnover complicating the ability for car hauling companies to sustain a reliable Workforce lastly as infrastructural expansion accelerates urbanization the demand for car transportation services also rise furest trining our already overextended system so today our aim is to present actionable models and strategies for involving into an open relay transportation system within the vehicle delivery sector focusing on Innovation for advanced Logistics efficiency to streamline operations and sustainability for environmentally uh friendly practices um I’ll hand over the presentation to my colleague now to continue yes uh thank you sish so what we propose in this slide is to make a shift from the current Transportation pattern which is called end to end so traditionally when you need to make a vehicle delivery you need to have truck directly going from The Source node to the destination here what we propose is called the relay Bas relay based transation so we’re going to introduce a network of the Tred hubs and these hubs are interconnected with the S node and the customers and by leveraging this uh hyperconnected logis we can decompose the L fre into a series of L sh local tasks and the aims of this hyperconnected relay based Transportation are three for first is to enable truckers to be back home frequently and the second is to enhance the free consolidation and the service termines and third is to achieve sustainability so in the next couple of slide we’re going to introduce uh and Implement a case study for the tri based theory in the United States we first connect the data from the fre and Analysis framework uh the data are about the domestic Import and Export vehicles in 2021 uh carried by trucks between FF regions so there around 129 F regions involved and the estimated daily vehicle numbers around 192,000 so this case study are focus on two scenarios the first is we try to uh try to reflect the aate situation which is the n transportation and we’re going to compare it with what we proposed which is called the relay transpar methods uh first we’re going to talk about the end to end translation so as you see on the left part uh we first list all the involved FF regions uh with red marks and then we show uh the flows between the red marks as uh the blue blue uh lens so the WID of the blue lens represent the scale of the flow so basically you can say the all the goods are directly shipped from the S destination and the issues behind this n transations includes restricted track rates the non-revenue Tim M and also the less than ideal working conditions so on the other hand what we propose is to implement a relay based Transportation so on the left you can say we we’re going to introduce a network of the Rel HS marked with orange uh dots and the green arcs so by leveraging this Rel relay H relay H Network they can first consult the vehicles into the entry hubs and then let the uh let a series of sh drivers to carry the l l fre to the xiab then do the last M and by leveraging this uh Hub Network we can achieve much better load consolidation and also improve the truck driver working condition by letting uh every driver stick to their local rout and also reduce the empty Mage to give a further comparation uh we’re going to re report a series KPS we first report the KPS in terms of Del efficiency so here you can see uh compared with the in transort the Rel transer has a less number of shipment uh with a much higher track load rate because the Hub never provide a better uh consolidation opportunities and on the other hand uh the red prodct can achieve much better de speed because uh when first driver need to rest it just passed the fre to the second driver to continue the trip and secondly we also compare the QPS in terms of the driver working condition so uh if you go to next slide you can see uh we we report uh the number of drivers and the total driving hours so compare with the transport the Rel transport will use M drivers but all the drivers will become the shter so instead of having some Lous drivers uh driving for more than um more than um 18 hours on the road we’re going to have more shut out drivers stick to their own local rout drive for around uh 6.8 hours so they uh in some sense uh much better improves the truck driver working condition and somehow it the truck driver shortage problems thirdly we also report the KPS in terms of in terms of the environmental fness so as you see here compared with the enter in the transport the Rel transport canare with the carbon dioxide emission and the few consumption because in Rel transport we have much better Consulting opportunities that help us decrease the number of trucks and also we decrease the the empty Mage so that’s somehow help us a the benefit in terms of the environmental friendliness so overall uh we compare with end to uh transport forers uh Rel transpar so we further provide the J map towards the ecoe efficient vehicle delivery so there are three steps first we propos to adopt open relay systems to support flexibility demand aggregation and secure free deployment secondly we propos to enhance the multimodel operational icy that in terms of leveraging conventional trucks uh EV uh hydrogen trucks and auton trucks and even multimodal transportation and thirdly we propos to foster a zero emission fre ecosystem that involves a collaboration between different stakeholders including shippers carriers drivers and providers and this uh collaboration will her is uh uh to achieve the sustainable and the emission free fre Network so uh that’s the overall fre real my propose and uh uh thank you for listening if you have any question feel free to bring them in the chat box uh thank you jingi and sarish and Zing you might want to ask your question questions yes I have a question because uh I remember that sish was talking about all this limitations of a vehicle delivery uh the vehicles that are used for vehicle delivery there are limitations on height on weight on weight on the distribution of weight Etc but I didn’t really see some solution that you are proposing is there any solutions that you are proposing in this project or for the moment it’s just some obstacles yeah so uh I can answer that one so um when talking about multimodal operational efficiency we talk about some different methods in that one we are also including some sort of convertible trucks um there are some convertible trucks already in the market um there’s also something called as an Autobox um that is uh already been implemented in Canada and it’s also um being deployed between Canada and us so what it does is basically it has um um it it has it has different features that can be utilized to include Freight other than just Auto Transport um so we can include um some different types of frases for example in what we are going to consider right now is include large Freight such as Furniture Etc that can be put onto the same trucks and these are going to be convertible trucks so that is how we would be um looking at the third um aspect of the first point here multiparticle consolidation so multiparty consolidation will be utilizing um convertible trucks yeah thank you thank you it’s cool um I will leap in with a question um so I was wondering you showed you concluded that greenhouse gas emission reductions are about 18.8% lower 20% lower something like that I’m just I was thinking okay let’s take a different Freight distribution system a different product uh Trucking as you you have it in the US and then I was trying to think through well would would other systems can we expect that that would be the same for other systems or would it be different or do we have no idea okay so I will put forward a hypothesis and see what you think my hypothesis is that other uh Freight distribution systems that us Trucking will be uh for this application that that you have developed here roughly the same because the freight corridors and general flight Freight flows in the US for cars are pretty similar to pretty much any other product so what do you think is that right or is there’s something else that you think would make this Auto vehicle delivery different from the majority of product Freight Systems by truck in the US uh I think I can uh take uh this questions so I think uh compared with the general free transation uh there are some special characteristics of the vehicle the for example for vehicle because this vehicles are fragile that means that we might want to uh minimize the touches of the freight on the on the trailer when we do the uh when we do the translation because you know like in positive you might do a lot of cross doing to consolate the trucks and have less number of trucks but in our kind of setting we might only want to do s such consultation at the entry Hub and then they kind of keep this uh keep Vehicles inside the harder until it arrive kind of the exit Hub and then they do kind of for uh the dropping and we drop the fre to the uh to the customers that means that the strategy of the consolidation and resting in terms of our setting is slightly different with the other kind of product but uh uh uh that but on the other hand uh we can kind of because we talk about the V the but that doesn’t mean that we need to limit or restrict our solution to this VY there be some like a like as collaboration between like for example the vehicle delivery versus uh the furniture delivery because they all try to deliver the large for it and the service just mentioned some like a convertible trailer actually there are some like startup companies they develop some like convertible trailers on the one way they use to uh deliver the kind of vehicles but on the back holding they try to use it to deliver the furniture so that means that uh I mean get long story short uh yes the vle Der has its own kind of characteristic but on the but on the other hand we can still find similar product and we find similar industry and then we try to Foster such collaboration wonderful thank you um in the interest of time um let me introduce our final speaker Dr katundu imiku Who is joining us and works for the southern African science service center for climate change and adaptive Land Management which is actually in um Namibia in Africa um and I will he will by the way uh be joining us at Georgia Tech in about a month uh which we’re very pleased katundu would you like to turn on your camera and unmute yourself and perhaps share your screen hello can you hear me yes we can hear you I internet seems to be tripping um can you allow me to just uh connect and connect again yes and it might also help you could send me your slides it might a worst case scenario is I could show your slides and you could join by phone or something or in some way but you can just we have time just disconnect and reconnect let’s see if it can work all right thank you can you see my screen yes and we hear you all right thank you sorry about that uh so thank you very much uh Professor Thomas for the introduction um I will give you just some highlights on the work that has been done in Africa concerning green hydrogen generation uh potential um in Africa so I’m katund masu from Southern African Science Center for climate change and adaptive Land Management uh in short Cod Sasa okay so that is just a brief outline of how U I’m going to proceed uh so going straight into what green hydrogen is uh this is just a um a nice schematic uh animated kind of vision of how green hydrogen is produced and uh we have Renewables on the left and then um utilizing electrolysis process um storing and compressing the hydrogen and then finally used in the transport sector so some of um the reasons why it has gained momentum are obviously climate change uh or depletion and business opportunities um in Africa um there’s a lot of interest around uh creating business opportunities and jobs for people and also earning Forex um not neglecting the fact that um uh Africa is also considering uh the other factors as well like o depletion um dependency and climate change so just highlighting uh uh some green hydrogen applications like I said in my previous slide uh Africa’s reality lies more on agriculture and Mobility or transport sector so Africa is focusing mainly on using U the green hydrogen as a fuel in the different Mobility um Industries especially the vehicles um and obviously the airplane uh transport mode as well um Africa is also looking at converting the hydrogen into ammonia and into ammonium nitrate which can be used as fertilizers as the key uh uh uh outputs that they expect out of green hydrogen production this just shows the growing demand uh from the Ia um of green hydrogen U of hydrogen uh globally and we can see clearly that uh the demands are increasing and uh by the different sectors and by 2070 we expect about a demand to be more than 500 metric tons of hydrogen per year so a typical project that was done U and I was part of this project uh was called the H2 Atlas Africa and this project was funded by bmbf U the German uh Ministry of U education and the key objectives are highlighted there which was firstly to analyze uh renewable energy and water resources available and also assess the potential of green hydrogen that the continent has and uh develop uh or model an atlas U using map box uh identify certain pilot projects which I’m going to present later uh to show what Africa has done so far uh in the generation of U green hydrogen and also to come up with policies which are not existent at the moment uh that would enhance or promote green hydrogen production um and then lastly scaling up uh the production and export of green hydrogen so far the project um has been implemented in West Africa and southern Africa and this these are typical uh screenshots from uh the atlas that have been um developed on the left hand side is for West Africa and on the right hand side is for southern Africa so by a May click on any area of interest there are lot of uh data sets and information that uh one can obtain out of this including uh the potential uh estimating costs uh in in in Euros or in in US dollar per kg of hydrogen so in terms of the methodology this is um the methodology that was used on the right hand side are the different data sets that were collected to come up with this graphic user interface which is also the H2 Atlas so climate projections were also done and taken into consideration uh being in in in in view of uh existing climate change land eligibility renewable energy potential uh social technical economic uh and the market analysis was also done and the available Water Resources ground water and surface water so how this was done was that uh National primary data was collected from different governments and institutions and this was used by a partner uh in German called the ulich uh to to model the ulage team had the global data sets so the primary data that was collected was used to uh validate uh the secondary data uh in consideration of also different local preferences which are the different rules and uh laws and guidance uh from the different individual countries so to highlight some of the results that came out of uh uh this Atlas that can be obtained out of this Atlas is on the left hand side is a maximum absolute uh technical hydrogen potential and then on the right hand side is just an example of uh how much uh uh wind turbines we can actually obtain um I also want to also highlight that uh the atlas also has different different views street map view it also has a satellite view this is basically the same thing except in two different views uh but it’s highlighting the leviz cost of electricity uh which can be generated uh uh from wind turbines in the year 2020 and uh I also want to highlight that projections have also been done also up to 2050 so this is quite uh handy tool that can be used uh especially for those that are conducting some research in southern Africa and uh West Africa so by a May click you can actually zoom in uh I zoomed into one city laka which is my country and then this shows the level of uh detail that was done um this shows that you can actually deploy some wind turbines in certain areas and then certain areas that have have been excluded because of either having some constraint of some sort maybe a settlement or a mountain or a river or something uh that cannot allow uh uh the deployment and then it also gives you the different cost capacity Technical and uh in in those units and the units you can actually maneuver and change uh to different units as well so in conclusion some of uh the pilot projects that were highlighted after uh doing uh implementing that project um uh and again I want to go back to my uh African reality so transport is one uh area that is still very key uh so you can notice here that two uh projects in green have been identified so the first one is uh changing a locomotive train which is diesel powered to hydrogen powered then the second one is uh changing a diesel powered attack bot um to a green hydrogen bot and then U the other one in rate is just producing the required hydrogen for the two projects and then the one in uh uh Maron is actually showing uh hydrogen production and ammonia converting the hydrogen into ammonia and ammonium nitrate and then using that to demonstrate um uh the use of ammonium nitrate in building uh in in growing crops in the agriculture sector so in a nutshell these are some of uh the works that have been done uh work is still going on and U Africa still stands um to learn a lot from the developed Nations uh and see if U it can contribute in a way to uh meet the global demands and also address the climate uh change issues that the world is facing today so just to acknowledge these are some of uh the people that uh institutions that can be acknowledged the sponsor bmbf Federal Ministry of Education for especially the uh H2 Atlas project then the implementing agents for West Africa and southern Africa sasco and the moders for the atlas in ulich also in German thank you very much uh for listening in thank you very very much Dr imiku we are just about out of time um it looks like we have uh it looks like you on now please ask your question yes I just have a very quick question thank you for the very interesting presentation I’m wondering can you comment on the current scale and the economics of the hydrogen product that you present it like how big are they and what is the cost in Africa okay thank you very much so like I mentioned these are still pilot projects uh so the idea is to just demonstrate that Africa is capable of uh uh producing green hydrogen to some extent so I’ll give an example of the agriculture project I think is worth about um 12 million uh Euros uh um the conversion of the locomotive is also worth uh much it’s worth about 6 million um then the other project uh which is the tagbot was also worth roughly about uh 20 million uh Euros so once uh the potential U has been demonstrated in terms of economics uh depending on what will come out of these pilot projects then the scaling up can actually be uh considered um however I also want to mention that u u each of these projects that have been identified also has a research uh component and skills development component uh which uh goes hand in hand to try and support uh the pilot project so like already there are like scholarships that are being given because Africa has got um uh some deficit when it comes to skills so there are some scholarships that are being provided to Young uh people to try and learn uh what this green hydrogen or hydrogen is all about so that’s basically that’s that’s that’s the the rationale in terms of uh economics and uh scaling up I hope I’ve tried to answer your question your so I wish to thank all of our audience and all of our participants for an excellent session we could definitely continue but we are out of time and we are past time so please feel free to contact each other uh for followup later thank you thank you zing for sharing the leadership thank you thank you bye bye have a nice day bye