Hydrogen burning internal combustion engine

The central element of such a system is the hydrogen-burning internal-combustion engine which already exists in practical and proven models. Its multi-fuel and mixed-fuel version offers not only complete adaptation of all existing internal-combustion engines (about 150 million engines in the USA alone) but it also allows complete flexibility in... 

The biggest attraction of fuel-cell-powered vehicles for car manufacturers is the fact that they no longer emit nitrogen oxides or hydrocarbons (or carbon dioxide if they are fuelled with pure hydrogen). (Burning hydrogen in internal combustion engines results in NOx emissions fuel-cell vehicles emit only water.) This effectively does away with one of the main environmental discussion points about traffic. In California, these zero-emission cars have been demanded since the foundation of the California Fuel Cell Partnership in 1999. 

Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine. Standard gasoline and diesel-powered internal combustion engine vehicles can be converted to mn on hydrogen. These vehicles have often been found considerably less polluting, safer, and more efficient than their fossil fuel-burning counterparts. 

Hydrogen has been suggested as a convenient, clean-burning fuel. Hydrogen gas may be stored as a compressed gas or as a liquid, and it also has properties that make it suitable as a fuel for internal combustion engines in automobiles. 

As can be seen from Table 1.57, the efficiency of fuel cells is about double that of gas-burning internal combustion (IC) engines. Therefore, if fuel cells can be made at the same cost as IC engines, hydrogen fuel cell-based transportation is already cost competitive with gasoline-based transportation. Unfortunately, at this point in time, fuel cells are much more expensive, but that is likely to change as soon as mass production starts. 

The fuel used to make solar-hydrogen is free (sunshine) and unlimited, the raw material for H2 is water, and the emission when burning the H2 in fuel cells, internal combustion engines, or in power plants is distilled water. The cost of building the solar-hydrogen plants will be known once the demonstration power plant described in this book is built. It might turn out that this cost is already competitive but whatever it is, we know that it will drop by an order of magnitude when the mass production of ultrathin-film solar collectors and reversible fuel cells is started. 

In the process of electrifying the automobile, the hydrogen FCV has no need for the internal combustion engine (ICE) or the oil it burns. Since their inventions in the late 1800s, spark ignition ICEs used to burn gasoline and compression ignition ICEs used to burn diesel have powered virtually all the billion plus motor vehicles built to date. ICEs are installed in virtually all the 50 million cars, trucks, and buses built annually around the world today. 

Hydrogen is widely regarded as the ideal or nearly ideal fuel to solve those problems. By definition, it doesn t pollute. Burned or oxidized with atmospheric oxygen, it produces water. (It also produces some nitrogen oxides if combustion occurs with a flame, as in an internal-combustion engine, but no nitrogen oxides are produced in an electrochemically reactive fuel cell.)... 

Although it is possible to burn hydrogen directly as a fuel (as in an internal combustion engine as a direct replacement for gasoline), most projections of widespread future hydrogen use envisage its use in fuel cells. There are four main areas of such applications auxiliary power units, portable fuel cells, stationary power and FCVs. 

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