I thought hydrogen was to be used in a fuel cell, and not an internal cumbustion engine.
nope, its combustible, and highly so.
BMW is doing pretty well with hydrogen combustion engines.
check it out...
http://www.worldcarfans.com/news.cfm?newsid=2040920.001&bmw=1.html/country/gcf
There's a reason why the Internal combustion engine is still the basic design after 125 years. It can be modified in innumerable ways.
hydrogen is the panacea of the left
FRom their home page, They are doing 'it'.
http://www.hydrogenenginecenter.com/
Clean Power NOW
There is no need to wait for clean power. HEC introduced the first production hydrogen-fueled, spark ignited, internal combustion engine for industrial uses in 2004. We are making engines available years before automotive companies will offer their hydrogen engines for industrial applications.
Clean AFFORDABLE Power
If the cost of fuel cells sinks your budget, then you will love our hydrogen-fueled gensets producing your electrical power. We eliminated complex, expensive solutions in favor of those designs that could approach current power costs, given similar volumes of manufacturing.
If You Aren’t Ready For Hydrogen Yet
HEC has now introduced two gasoline fueled engines that can easily be converted sometime later to use hydrogen. This pre-positioning simplifies the conversion once the hydrogen fuel supply catches up with the installed base. These engines are designed like all new automotive engines are designed today, except with rugged nodular iron blocks and heads for industrial uses.
Alternative Fuels
We will consider customizing for alternative fuels if they have potential for improving our environment. We have research programs underway for high efficiency, and zero emission engines. We will consider all potential sources of hydrogen. Call or email us if you have a project you think might interest us.
Where Will These Engines Be Used?
These engines will be used for airport ground support equipment, agricultural power generation needs, underground mining, emergency power generation, material handling, scissor-lifts and forklifts, military applications, and off-road equipment.
A fuel cell/electric motor combination is certainly the most efficient way to obtain motive power from hydrogen - probably twice the output of any internal combustion engine burning hydrogen in air.
Hydrogen is easy to use as fuel, but expensive and difficult to extract, store, transport, and distribute. Hydrogen cannot be liquified at any temperature above MINUS 400 F, a very expensive temperature to reach and maintain. Cryogenic storage and distribution is not practical, so we are left with chemical storage or compressed hydrogen gas.
As the lightest molecule in existence, gaseous hydrogen can leak through almost anything, including solid steel. Increased pressure means increased leakage. Also, hydrogen gas is explosive in air at a mixture of as little as 8 percent. Monitoring and venting will be critical. Also, distributing a gas is far different from distributing a liquid. Is the distribution system at a high or a low pressure? As a gas expands, it cools; as it is compressed, it heats. Allowing gas to flow from a hi-pressure supply tank into an empty vehicle tank is energy intensive. And it would have to be pumped into the tank, because if the supply pressure were low your vehicle tank would not be filled. And how do you measure the fuel?
Let's consider the standard for the energy content of vehicle fuel, which clearly is gasoline. But gasoline has a secondary characteristic - it is nature's method for storing hydrogen at a density not found elsewhere in nature anywhere closer than 90,000,000 miles from here - (the Sun). The average molecule in gasoline is almost 16% hydrogen, over 40% greater than water. In fact, in order to match the number of hydrogen atoms per gallon of gasoline, gaseous hydrogen would have to be pressurized to over 19,000 PSI in the same volume. HALF that pressure is remarkable.
So I believe that the only practical way to use gaseous hydrogen as a common vehicle fuel will be by tank exchange, using standardized tanks. That is how most of us buy fuel for a gas grill today.
But I don't think we will do that. I think that the fuel of the future will be ... GASOLINE! Perhaps we will no longer be able to find the crude oil we make it from today, but we will make it from other sources of carbon, hydrogen, and energy, and distribute it the same way we do today.