Mechanical challenges of an H2 internal combustion engine and solutions
2022-01-0708
03/29/2022
- Event
- Content
- Hydrogen fueled internal combustion engines are a great opportunity for zero carbon and zero impact emission powertrains. They can be quickly introduced in the market and benefit from the huge experience on diesel and gas engines acquired in the past. Nevertheless, the use of hydrogen poses new challenges to engine manufacturers that are explored in this paper. Due to the wide flammability limits of hydrogen, self-ignition is a risk that can occur, limiting the performance of the engine and creating reliability issues. Self-ignition can originate from different reasons, some of them related to hot spots in the combustion chamber. Those can be generated by unoptimized geometry, material properties, oil composition, spark plugs characteristics, fuel injection systems etc. In this paper, FEV will present results about sensitivity of different solutions against self-ignition investigated on the single cylinder engine as well as multicylinder. Furthermore, the risk of accumulating hydrogen in the crankcase will be analyzed and potential countermeasures will be presented which reduce the risk of a crankcase explosion in case of an engine malfunction. Finally, an insight about material compatibility versus hydrogen embrittlement on several components will be provided, to secure the typical reliability of the internal combustion engine that we know today.
- Citation
- Biwer lng, C., Ghetti, S., Bey, R., Virnich PhD, L. et al., "Mechanical challenges of an H2 internal combustion engine and solutions ," SAE Technical Paper 2022-01-0708, 2022, .