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New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Could hydrogen combustion engines power more vehicles – rather than fuel cells?
12/6/2024
8 min read
Feature
A lot of effort is going into hydrogen-fuelled transport solutions. These are usually fuel cells generating electricity to power electric motors. But some manufacturers see hydrogen as an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines to power vehicles directly, reports Toby Clark.
On the face of it, combusting hydrogen seems an odd proposition: the overall efficiency of a fuel cell system is better, which is one reason why mainstream car manufacturers are concentrating on fuel cells (FC) and battery-electric (BEV) solutions. BMW built a series of hydrogen-fuelled luxury cars, but ultimately gave up on the technology. But for some applications, an internal combustion engine (ICE) is more attractive than either.
Construction equipment
Tim Burnhope, JCB Group Director of Special Projects, reckons hydrogen engines are an easy swap: ‘If you were to jump off a diesel backhoe and on to a hydrogen one, you would notice no difference in terms of power, torque, performance.’
But the journey was painstaking. ‘We had the world’s first electric mini-excavator, [and] we’ve sold over 20,000 machines.’ On urban sites, charging is easy, but larger vehicles often operate far from mains electricity, and diesel generators would defeat the decarbonisation object. JCB concluded that batteries were impractical on larger machines: ‘For a 20-tonne excavator to run for 16 hours, we’d need 1,000 kWh – 10 tonnes and £400,000 of batteries – and at least a megawatt charger. Our customers said: ‘If we use a machine 24 hours a day, we don't have time to charge it; we just want to put fuel in.’