Never heard of this before. Expected to be in full production by 2027. Early tests seem extremely promising. The new engine shares most of the short block components with their diesel engine to keep costs down. The only problem with Hydrogen powered engines is getting the hydrogen. But this is a great step forward.
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Interesting…
H2 powered spark engines have been around for quite a while. BMW had a production version of the 7 series for sale in the US a number of years ago. This is the first diesel I’ve seen.
This would solve the productivity issue of trucks used nearly around the clock Especially from dedicated site to dedicated site so fuel would be available at each site. H2 fuels as quickly as diesel fueled trucks so that 8 hour charge for an EV truck disappears. Many Walmart warehouses have fuel cell fork-trucks running around so there would be an H2 fuel source on site at those locations.
Once H2 tanks are available, switching to fuel cell powered electric drivetrains would be pretty easy. EV torque, regen braking and fast fuel with H2 could be a viable low emission option.
It seems crazy that the most abundant element is difficult to exploit as fuel.
The problem is that the most abundant element does not exist on Earth except in combination with other elements that it is bonded tightly to and it takes electrical energy to separate them. How much electrical energy?
The answer is, more energy than you can get from using the hydrogen.
It would be great if we had unlimited sources of clean energy, but we don’t. We don,t have enough to supply our needs now and need to generate some electricity from natural gas, nuclear
and in some places, coal.
We have electric cars coming online, and apparently hydrogen trucks and NY is going to ban gas in homes and businesses. We do not yet have the infrastructure to distribute more electric and we will have to burn more dirty fuel to get it.
Does not make sense to this Luddite.
What is the range of these Hydrogen trucks? Diesel trucks can go 600 to 1000 mile between refueling. How much weight ,space, and cost will the Hydrogen tanks add and how about the safety factor. Can you imagine the explosion? You can put out matches in diesel.
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Here’s a great article from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on the current and future ways hydrogen can be produced:
Hydrogen Production and Delivery | Hydrogen and Fuel Cells | Hydrogen and Fuel Cells | NREL
I may not see this in my lifetime, but it is really promising.
Technology is changing. We may not have clean power to meet all our needs TODAY. But that doesn’t mean it can’t/won’t happen.
I know this isn’t the first hydrogen engine. What I thought was really interesting was their design where they are using basically the same short block for both the diesel engine and hydrogen engine. Only the heads will be different. This is good thinking.
In the short term it may not be needed. Most trucks on the road are short hauls. A neighbor of mine is a trucker for WalMart. He basically does 2-5 deliveries from one of the warehouses to stores here in Southern NH and Northern MA. He doesn’t drive anywhere near 600 miles in a day. For those trucks hydrogen could be a great source.
These vehicles aren’t built like the Hindenburg. They are as safe or safer than conventional ICE vehicle.
[(Are hydrogen cars safe? | Ask Toyota FAQs)
Here’s why hydrogen-fueled cars aren’t little Hindenburgs | Computerworld
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Hydrogen is merely an energy carrier. Primarily it comes from natural gas. It can be produced cleanly with solar powered electrolysis, but at the moment, that is a very small amount.
The exaust product from combustion or fuel cells is water vapor.
It is stored in large volumes as a cryogenic liquid. In smaller volumes (in a car or truck) as a gas. It burns cool and it dissipates very quickly into the atmosphere if the tanks leak. It is quite safe to use.
For a semi truck, they should be able to store enough gas on board to meet most travel needs. Maybe a bit less than 600 miles, but still substantial. The fuel and tanks weight quite a bit less than the huge battery an EV truck would need that would reduce payload.
It’s not all that safe. Hydrogen is explosive over a much wider range of concentrations than natural gas or gasoline. Also, hydrogen is more difficult to seal, leaks can be a problem.
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Yes, it is explosive. Thus, the use of extreme designs for cars to prevent such a thing from happening.
Agreed but it doesn’t lay on the ground waiting for an ignition source like diesel, gasoline or propane either. Natural gas is lighter than air so it dissipates into the atmosphere like H2. All fuels have risk. We’ve gotten comfortable over time with similar risks.
Handling H2 is an everyday occurrence in many industries. The petroleum industry uses H2 to remove sulfur from fuels. H2 is used in the food, chemical and metal processing industries.
As of 2021, there are 166 fuel cell electrical generation facilities with 260 Megawatts of capacity in the US supplied with H2. We use about 10 million tons of H2 annually in the US alone. There are hundreds of warehouses in the US and Europe using H2 fueled fuel cell forklifts. Some are used 24/7 with 10s of thousands of H2 refuelings every year inside these facilities.
A link to an article about H2 safety and their conclusions is below.
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Working on something does not mean you are going to succeed. Alchemists worked on turning other metals into gold for centuries.
I do not believe that you can get more energy by breaking the bond between Hydrogen and other elements and then combining it with oxygen buy burning it or using it in a fuel cell.
Hydrogen is not a power source, it is an energy storage system. The energy to create the free hydrogen has to come from somewhere and as long as we are burning natural gas to get electricity to crack hydrogen, we would be better off using the natural gas directly.
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Hi oldtimer-11:
I do not believe that you can get more energy by breaking the bond between Hydrogen and other elements and then combining it with oxygen buy burning it or using it in a fuel cell.
I’ve not heard anyone disagree with your above assertion.
Hydrogen is not a power source, it is an energy storage system. The energy to create the free hydrogen has to come from somewhere and as long as we are burning natural gas to get electricity to crack hydrogen, we would be better off using the natural gas directly.
Is anyone saying we need to use natural gas to get the hydrogen?
I see the input energy to get the hydrogen coming someday from a renewable resource.
That’s up for debate. Natural gas is not entirely methane. The other hydrocarbons produce different chemicals when burned. Also when methane burns it isn’t completely incinerated. A small amount of natural gas escapes into the atmosphere along with carbon dioxide, a main constituent of methane burning. All of the above are greenhouse gasses. I don’t expect individuals to have pollution abatement equipment to scavenge the products of natural gas conversion or combustion but a commercial plant using natural gas feed stock would have it.
The byproduct of methane combustion, like all fossil fuels is Co2 and water… plus some other bad stuff as @jtsanders points out.
Combustion of H2 is JUST water vapor. Same for fuel cell conversion.
H2 can be made completely Co2 free from solar panels, hydroelectric or windmills powering electrolyzers. Maybe it can be made from biological processes… those are in the research pipeline. Today, most is from steam re-formed natural gas.
I suspect NOx is a possibility if the burn is hot enough.
Yes, NOx is a problem but similar in volume to gasoline engines so a catalyst is still required.
Speaking of Hydrogen…
No, and you’re probably imagining the one you’re thinking of.
And as for the Hindenburg, that’s actually an excellent example of hydrogen NOT exploding. It burned, but inside the envelope, in the pure hydrogen environment, you could also put out a match.