Italian engineering firm Punch Group is working to convert General Motors’ 6.6L Duramax V8 turbodiesel engine to run on hydrogen.
Speaking to Automotive News Europe, Punch Group CEO Guido Dumarey said the company is currently developing the hydrogen-fueled version of the 6.6L Duramax V8, which will serve as the-range-topping powerplant in a three-pronged lineup of Punch-developed hydrogen internal combustion engines that will also include a 2.0L I-4 and a 3.0L V6. These engines will range in output from around 110 horsepower to roughly 540 horsepower.
6.6L Duramax V8 engine
According to Dumarey, the biggest challenge with regard to converting an engine to burn hydrogen is the fact the fuel burns seven times faster than diesel, resulting in much higher temperatures within the combustion chamber. Water injection can be used to lower the temperatures in an application such as this, however this can lead to corrosion of block and other components. A hydrogen internal combustion engine would also need a more robust oiling/lubrication system, as these motors tend to be “very dry,” Dumarey explained.
Dumarey sees a viable market for a large, powerful internal combustion engine that burns hydrogen. Increasingly strict emissions laws in the U.S., China and Europe will eventually make the turbodiesel engine no longer viable, necessitating the need for battery-electric or hydrogen-powered alternatives. While automakers are working hard on future battery-electric technology, there has been less movement from OEMs on the hydrogen front.
An internal combustion engine that burns hydrogen is much different than a hydrogen fuel cell like GM’s Hydrotec design. While a fuel cell relies on a chemical reaction to generate electricity and power an electric motor, a hydrogen-burning ICE generates energy through the combustion of hydrogen, much like a gasoline engine. These engines would still provide a small amount of NOx, as they burn hydrogen while intaking oxygen from the outside air, but are still considered to be more eco-friendly than hybrids or plug-in hybrids. Trace amounts of engine oil would also be burned during the combustion process.
As an aside, Toyota has developed its own turbocharged three-cylinder engine that runs on hydrogen. The automaker even participated in a five-hour endurance race with a specially-prepared Toyota Corolla using this engine in Japan late last year, successfully completing the race without any major problems. Racing driver Takuto Iguchi said the engine sound and felt “just like a regular engine,” and was virtually indistinguishable from a comparable gasoline-powered I-3.
Punch Group, which purchased General Motors Propulsion Engineering Center in Turin, Italy in 2020, expects to begin production of its hydrogen engines in 2024.
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Comments
Or just use carbon capture. Anyone familiar with a bleve fears hydrogen cars. Your litterally sitting on a bomb. Either way, I think the point is mute. There’s no middle ground with these great reset/build back better types.
»just use carbon capture« — exactly. The future is a circular economy, the final and total end of land fill and its gaseosous equivalent: “blow it in the air”.
CCU is the magic word: Carbon Capture and Use, as simply as feeding plants in vertical gardens and algae in tanks with it it. They need CO2 to grow. The isolate the carbon, the building block of their structure, and set the oxygen free.
Or we isolate the Carbon from the CO2 and use it for new technical materials.
Any way: nothing must be thrown into nature any more, what we produce by technical processes must be reused by other technical processes.
BTW, recently a group of Chinese scientists has achieved to produce starch from CO2, in several steps.
What Jake writes about hydrogen cars is valid the same way for petrol fired cars: both can oxydize (another word for burning) quite rapidly, i.e. explode. But such occurrences are rare.
Caterpillar is going big into hydrogen as well, they announced it for generators and locomotives. The big challenge is infrastructure for the fuel delivery. Makes more sense for commercial generators where they stay in the same place every day and you can just deliver fuel right to it, or locomotives where the railroads already maintain their own fuel stations. But for automotive you’re kinda limited to fleet customers like garbage trucks and school buses that come back to the garage every day, similar to propane engines today. To really make it main stream the OEMs would need to get behind it and convince the government to start a program for installing hydrogen pumps at gas stations.
Hydrogen power has been around a long time. It did prove functional in the past and I doubt it will now.
Special ordered a New Formula WS6 with the 1LE package back in 1997…It is the last of the true stripper cars (Base cloth interior…6 Speed manual trans NO power accessories or extra creature comforts) Has hardcore Factory suspension/brake upgrades…With the addition of 1LE and the deleted Comforts Knocked $4000 off of the price from a loaded WS6 Trans Am …At the time you couldn’t beat the performance for the cost…Still have it today…
Toyota already has a fully functioning hydrogen ICE prototype… Sounds nice too.
NOx emissions……so CARB will ensure this never becomes viable in the US….and the electric agenda will roll on.
Carmakers want EV because it requires less parts, saving money, and the battery will eventually serve as a modular piece for the car’s floor meaning it’s all a collection of Lego blocks with high margins and guaranteed fit and finish.
I heard about a Central Asian nation where hydrogen conversion kits are already popular due to high gas prices.
Toyota has developed a scrubber for their hydrogen ICE. Also continuously improving their multilayered storage tank- as in the production Miraj. Hydrogen is the highest energy density. Five pounds is like 400 miles range.
The ICE engine is just far too complex compared with an electric motor.
I don’t see a reason to save the ICE by burning Hydrogen in the ICE cylinders.
BTW, Guido Dumarey’s Punch group also purchased the former GM transmission plant in Strasbourg, France. And he unsuccessfully tried to purchase the Holden factory in Melbourne, Australia, and — if I am not mistaken — the Holden brand.
The products are blended out of virgin base oils from Lube-Ref, ARAMCO, which is well known for highest quality of crude oils and manufacturers of high volatility and low sulfur bases oils in the whole world. The blending plants are situated both in Saudi Arabia and UAE. Our manufacturing involves highest standards of raw materials, additives and base stock. The products are tested and approved by the major international OEMs.
Best wishes and good luck to Punch Group.
Good article, about time hydrogen started getting the attention it deserves as a green fuel for internal combustion engines. Time to finish the equation however. On-board HHO production IS the answer. This is the technology and mass-market prototype and manufacturing that the greatest number of people will love and buy. Some people are quietly already converting their vehicles like this all over the world. Worst case is on-board HHO production to SUPPLEMENT gasoline and diesel engines, increasing MPGs, decreasing exhaust pollution dramatically. Good luck!
JBC says they solved the NOx issue: Why hydrogen, not electric, is JCB’s choice for hitting zero emissions. Lord Bamford explains why – YouTube