Dia Adhikari Smith: Lighter fuels for heavy freight

Dr Dia Adhikari Smith is an e-mobility research fellow within the University of Queensland’s Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation and the School of Civil Engineering.

Her research focuses on advancing the performance, economics, and uptake of e-mobility globally with a particular focus on the decarbonisation of both on-road and non-road heavy vehicles used in the transport and construction sectors.

What sort of research is undertaken by your group?

Our multi-disciplinary E-Mobility Research Group focusses on opportunities, benefits, barriers, and challenges to the decarbonisation of transport systems and we explore all possible decarbonisation options including battery electric, hydrogen fuel cells, advanced biofuels, and other alternative fuels.

I work on feasibility studies, cost benefit analysis, emissions modelling, Total Cost of Ownership scenarios and developing strategic roadmaps and policy packages to enable this transition to net zero. Recently, we have also been involved in planning pilot projects to trial zero-emission vehicles to collect real world data to analyse feasibility more accurately – understand vehicle performance, passenger/payload capacities, charging requirements and operator usage.

Do you work on little white vans as well as heavy freight vehicles?

Yes. My road freight decarbonisation studies include all different types of freight vehicles – heavy-duty, medium-duty, light rigids, light commercial vehicles. We are also exploring opportunities to decarbonise roadside assistance vehicles, tow trucks, and tool of trade SUVs.

Do you also delve into the area of last mile vehicles, like freight bikes and the like?

That’s someone else’s remit. I’m mostly focussed on heavier vehicles, so the closest I get to last-mile vehicles are light rigids and light commercial vehicles. My research mainly investigates on-road heavy vehicles like buses, and all types of trucks and then for the non-road heavy vehicle sector I look into marine vessels, rail, and heavy vehicles used in construction such as excavators, cranes, wheel loaders, cement-mixers, construction trucks, bulldozers and so on.

And what was your path, where did you study and how did you get to where you are now? What was your career path?

Throughout my school education I really enjoyed physics and applied math, as a result I decided to study electrical and electronics engineering for my Bachelor’s and Master’s at the University of Sussex in England. After that I did my PhD in Energy Systems and Power Engineering at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. I really liked working on anything towards the application end, for example, understanding grid planning and operations.

During my post-doctoral research work at the Centre for Integrated Renewable Energy Generation and Supply in Cardiff University in Wales I started working in the renewables and cleaner fuels field. I was involved in research to investigate Smart Grid network assessment and planning methodologies that would consider type, extent, and pathway of various smart, innovative, and sustainable technology interventions such as renewable energy sources, distributed generation, battery storage, electric vehicles, and hydrogen.

Since then, I have mostly been involved in the cleaner fuels/technology/energy field and that’s how my research slowly became more focused on e-mobility.

It sounds like you’ve done a bit of a tour of the UK and its universities!

Yes, England, Scotland, Wales – three out of four; the fourth one – Northern Ireland, visited several times but never lived or studied there.

And when was it you made way to Australia?

My husband is Australian, and I met him when we were doing our PhDs in Glasgow. After my Postdoc, I moved to Australia to be with him. But then with his work we moved to the US, where I worked as a lecturer at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. In 2020, COVID had just begun to spread widely in the US, so we decided to return home to Australia as soon as we could.

And when was it you started at University of Queensland?

I think it was around Jan 2021 that I started at UQ.

Let’s leave the real world for a moment and let’s make you the Empress of Queensland. You have ultimate control, ultimate budget, no restrictions on manpower, you can fix a transport problem in your field. What would you like to direct all that power and resources to?

The first thing that comes to mind is something around the upcoming 2032 Brisbane Olympics. There’ll be major construction work and transport activity all around Queensland, and I’d like to strive to make these construction projects more sustainable.

If I had unlimited budget, I’d plan a research collaboration with a construction group to support the planning and preparation of a pilot project to trial a near zero-emission construction site with zero-emission heavy machinery and equipment, and construction-related transport vehicles. And when I say construction-related transport vehicles, these include trucks used at construction sites, for example cement mixer trucks, water trucks, dump trucks, rubbish waste trucks, and also vehicles that transport construction machinery, materials, construction workers to and from the site. This hypothetical pilot project would trial all these zero emission technologies at a Queensland construction site.

The purpose of this trial would be to analyse the key benefits and challenges of adopting different low and zero emission technologies for construction site activities. This would include construction equipment and transport to and from the construction site and how these technologies could integrate into the current construction site model.

Then there’s the consequent grid implications, because if everything’s electrified, of course we would need major changes in how the construction site is connected to the grid.

Just a quick reality sidebar here, how confident are you in the feasibility of hydrogen-powered trucks?

To date, hydrogen use in the transport sector has been limited to less than 0.01% of energy consumed, and in 2020 hydrogen-powered vehicles made up a very small share of the global stock of total vehicles. To decarbonise road freight whilst operating hydrogen fuel cell trucks, the hydrogen used will primarily need to be produced in the form of green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen is currently around 2 to 4 times more expensive than grey hydrogen to produce. However, the hydrogen-powered vehicle market is beginning to take off, catalysed by developments in Asia and the United States. Hydrogen trucks may be a better zero emission truck option for those extremely demanding routes – where a battery electric truck would require significantly longer charging times or multiple battery swaps to be operationally feasible.

Hydrogen has an important role to play more broadly in decarbonising the global economy, particularly in terms of green steel, cement, and fertiliser.

Sure, okay. Part two of this hypothetical, this time you’ve been downgraded your role, I’m sorry, you are now the Mayoress of Brisbane, the Lord Mayoress of Brisbane, same, same deal, but this time a limited budget, limited manpower, limited powers to attack a transport problem in Brisbane. What would you like to attack?

With a limited budget I would plan, again, to focus on a more sustainable Brisbane Olympic Games. So, with this limited budget you’ve given me for this scenario I would plan a similar research collaboration to the unlimited budget one, but this one would be a pilot trial project focussing only on a certain task. Not the entire construction site this time, rather I would maybe focus on a technology that is already available here in Australia.

For this I’d like to trial battery electric cement mixer trucks at a construction site because we do have zero-emission battery electric truck models available here, which can be re-engineered to make them into cement mixers. So we can trial a cement mixer truck or maybe a multiple cement mixer trucks for a particular construction site.

This would help us collect and compare telematics data from these electric cement-mixer trucks to already available data from existing diesel cement trucks that they’re currently using to analyse real-world operating costs, fuel consumption and emissions to understand and better refine our feasibility studies that we are already investigating.

Because our current feasibility studies are all based on assumptions and data collected from international studies, we don’t have any real-world data available to us from trials happening here.

The cost of these changes is really important. Also the cost and reach of the infrastructure build is going to be important if we were really make the switches you outline in your hypothetical.

Yes, definitely. That’s the main driver in my mayoral hypothetical. I want to use low/zero emission technology/fuel that’s already available here. For construction heavy machinery and equipment, not all zero-emission models are currently available here in Australia. But we do have a few different battery electric truck models available here in Australia, and we can re-engineer them for our use in the construction sector.

Back to real you and the real world. In your many, many universities across Europe and America and now Australia, what project is it that you’ve worked on that you’d be most proud of to date?

I’d highlight our ongoing research collaboration with the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads freight team. Queensland’s Road Freight fleet is responsible for approximately 25% of greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector, and these emissions are projected to keep growing until at least 2030. Our research explored the relative feasibility of introducing different low and zero emission freight technologies in Queensland.

While each technology presents a range of benefits, including the potential to reduce emissions, there are also a number of challenges – some general, others specific – in preparing for the introduction of each of these technologies. We ran an operational and economic feasibility assessment for deploying low and zero emission trucks – battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell, and also advanced biofuel like renewable diesel trucks on a sample of key road freight routes across Queensland.

We are currently developing a strategic roadmap and a package of a recommended policies to enable this transition of how we can transition Queensland’s road freight task to a lower or zero emission one.

The other project I’d like to mention is our collaborative partnership with Lendlease to investigate the range of low and zero emission technologies that could drive the transition to fossil fuel free and ultimately zero emission construction sites. The overall results of this research provide comprehensive insight into the current, upcoming, and future rollout of non-road low and zero emission vehicles, equipment and machinery for the global construction industry and will inform development of Government policy and industry roadmaps to support this transition.

Are there any findings or things you’ve learnt from this that you’re allowed to speak of yet?

I will be presenting those at the iMOVE Conference 2022. So yes, we have findings from the feasibility assessment, and we are currently working on the strategic roadmap and the recommended policy part of it.

Perfect. There you are people if you want to hear more get to the conference! Last question for you Dia. What you’re doing is quite a new field and I imagine you’ve done quite a bit of work, but there’s also quite a lot more to be done. What is it that you haven’t yet touched on but you’d like to in the future?

I’m quite interested in research involving implementation of different low and zero emission technologies to decarbonise ferries and marine tourism vessels. I want to look into potential opportunities and barriers to run low and zero emission vessels on ferry routes and marine tourism routes – focussing on technology, route choices, passenger capacities, operator experience, charging pattern, and various other performance aspects.

Do you know of much more going on in this area around Australia rather than just Queensland?

I think there were two battery-electric ferries running in Sydney – two Australian built vessels, which were converted to electric in New South Wales, running on 28.8kWh rechargeable batteries that charge to full in just 2.5 hours and enable 7 hours of operation per charge.

You’re right, it’s an area full of promise and really quite unexplored at the moment in this country.

That’s right. Globally a lot more is happening, especially in New Zealand, Canada and Scandinavia – those countries are running a few different electric and hybrid ferries.