Never again in my lifetime will we see real unleaded at 19p a litre. However Cella Energy is claiming that's what we would be paying for a hydrogen based fuel which can be used in existing petrol engine cars "without modification". Well, without adding a hydrogen tank etc. of course.
I've been watching the development of hydrogen based fuels for internal combustion engines for a while as its a very renewable (water derived) source of power and burns in a car engine with only water vapour as the by product. Yes, a zero emission vehicle. Older cars will have some hydrocarbons in the tail pipe simply because of oil washing past the control rings into the combustion chamber but this is about as green as it gets for the old four stroke.
I am aware of research being done at the University of Sheffield who have a Ford Focus already running on Hydrogen gas. They claim close to zero emissions at the tailpipe and no noticeable loss of power when switching between unleaded petrol and the gas system. Sheffield were also talking about a home-user solar powered hydrogen generator at the time which answers the critics who whine that hydrogen isn't renewable as you need electricity to make it and (regardless of what Eon etc. tell you) the proportion of mains electricity coming from renewables is slim right now.
As I understand the conversion it is similar to an LPG conversion, just with a cleaner gas. However it does seem Cella are suggesting a liquid fuel could be marketed which goes in the regular petrol tank. Even better...
I am interested as to the calorific value of hydrogen compared to unleaded and its octane equivalent. IE how good is this fuel going to be at supporting real big power and huge boost in forced induction applications? Has a whole new avenue of tuning just opened up?
I hope so.
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