Hydrogen Comes on Strong
Sunday March 11, 2007
With a big push from the European Union Commission, the HyICE project—the optimization of the Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine—has come to fruition. This ambitious project has produced a hydrogen fueled internal combustion engine that is superior over previous designs in terms of cost and performance.
While much of the previous design and engineering effort was aimed at engines that could utilize both gasoline and hydrogen as fuel, HyICE focuses exclusively on hydrogen combustion. The spectacular results are power outputs of up to 100Kw (135 HP) per liter of displacement—easily on par with conventionally fueled engines.
Teams of engineers from the automotive industry and universities coordinated their efforts under the direction of BMW Group Research and Technology to develop two concepts (direct injection and external cold mixture), both of which were approved for passenger car and city bus use. To further enhance HyICE, the teams regularly shared their findings with researchers from the United States. The hope is that this sharing of information will promote cooperation on the continuing development of hydrogen energy sources and alternative drive trains.
While much of the previous design and engineering effort was aimed at engines that could utilize both gasoline and hydrogen as fuel, HyICE focuses exclusively on hydrogen combustion. The spectacular results are power outputs of up to 100Kw (135 HP) per liter of displacement—easily on par with conventionally fueled engines.
Teams of engineers from the automotive industry and universities coordinated their efforts under the direction of BMW Group Research and Technology to develop two concepts (direct injection and external cold mixture), both of which were approved for passenger car and city bus use. To further enhance HyICE, the teams regularly shared their findings with researchers from the United States. The hope is that this sharing of information will promote cooperation on the continuing development of hydrogen energy sources and alternative drive trains.
Comments
I agree that it makes a lot more sense to focus on an engine that burns only Hydrogen fuel. In that way, the engine design can be refined to make the most efficient use of hydrogen.
I truly believe that Hydrogen is the fuel of the future. As you say, it the most abundant element in the universe. It is renewal. It is recyclable. Most importantly, it does not pollute the environment.
The two issues that I have is how will this hydrogen powered engine store the hydrogen on board. I understand that hydrogen has one tenth the density of gasoline. At extremely cold temperatures hydrogen becomes liquid and approaches gasoline in density. How will these hydrogen engine engineers solve the fuel carrying dilemma?
The other issue that I see is the distribution of hydrogen as fuel. At the moment, there is no infrastructure for the distribution of hydrogen. How do we solve this problem?
Thanks for the comments Gil. There are several ways to store hydrogen, with some more practical and developed than others. The two most common are compressed gaseous form and super chilled (cryogenic) liquid form. Three others under development are complex metal hydrides, chemical hydrides and absorbtion materials (e.g. carbon nanotubes). Once these methods and others are fully developed, much of the on-board storage challenge goes away.
The infrastructure problem is more of a battle of will. It’ll take time to build up political support and the willingness of private businesses and maybe even individual communities to invest the money.