Technical and Economic Analysis of Fuel Cells for Forklift Applications.

This study compared the life cycle cost (LCC) of LiFePO4 battery, proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), and direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) as the main power source of electric forklifts. The battery showed the lowest LCC over 10 years ($14,935) among the three power sources, thanks to the significant price reduction in recent years. The fuel cost accounted for more than 70% of the total LCC of PEMFC ($36,682) when the hydrogen price was $8/kg. The LCC of DMFC ($41,819) with the current performance and catalyst loading (0.2 W/cm2, 6 mgPGM/cm2) was 12% higher than the LCC of PEMFC ($36,682). The LCC of DMFC ($25,050) will be 28.9% lower than that of PEMFC if both PEMFC and DMFC reach the target performance and catalyst loading set by the U.S. Department of Energy (1 W/cm2, 0.125 mgPGM/cm2 for PEMFC and 0.3 W/cm2, 3 mgPGM/cm2 for DMFC). The smaller fleet size will significantly increase the LCC of PEMFC due to the high cost of hydrogen fueling and storage infrastructure. For forklift users with less than 50 units, which account for 80% of forklift users, DMFC will be even more cost-effective due to the significantly lower cost of methanol infrastructure.

Treatment Preferences of Residents Assumed to Have Severe Chronic Diseases in China: A Discrete Choice Experiment.

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to elicit the relative importance of treatment attributes that influence residents' choice, assuming they are suffering severe non-communicable diseases (NCDs), to explore how they make trade-offs between these attributes and to estimate the monetary value placed on different attributes and attribute levels. METHODS: A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted with adults over 18 years old in China. Preferences were evaluated based on four treatment attributes: care provider, mode of service, distance to practice and cost. A mixed logit model was used to analyze the relative importance of the four attributes and to calculate the willingness to pay (WTP) for a changed attribute level. RESULTS: A total of 93.47% (2019 of 2160) respondents completed valid questionnaires. The WTP results suggested that participants would be willing to pay CNY 822.51 (USD 124.86), CNY 470.54 (USD 71.41) and CNY 68.20 (USD 10.35) for services provided by experts, with integrated traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine (WM) and with a service distance <=30 min, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggested that mode of service, care provider, distance to practice and cost should be considered in priority-setting decisions. The government should strengthen the curative service capability in primary health facilities and give full play to the role of TCM in the prevention and treatment of severe chronic diseases.