Advances in hydrogen compression ignition internal combustion engines

The turbocharged direct injection lean burn Diesel engine is the most efficient engine now in production for transport applications within heavy duty trucks applications full load brake engine thermal efficiencies up to 45% and reduced penalties in brake engine thermal efficiencies reducing the load by the quantity of fuel injected. The secrets of this engine's performances are the high compression ratio and the lean bulk combustion mostly diffusion controlled in addition to the partial recovery of the exhaust energy to boost the charging efficiency. The major downfalls of this engine are the carbon dioxide emissions and the depletion of natural resources using fossil Diesel, the energy security issues of using foreign fuels in general, and finally the difficulty to meet future emission standards, for the intrinsically "dirty" combustion of the fuel made up of a mixture of many hydrocarbon being injected in liquid state and the lack of maturity for the lean burn after treatment system. Renewable hydrogen is a possible replacement for the future of the Diesel that is free of carbon dioxide and other major emissions with the only exception of nitric dioxides, and it therefore makes sense to discuss the option to convert not only passenger car engines, but also heavy duty truck engines to run hydrogen. In this paper, a heavy duty Diesel truck engine is modelled and converted to run hydrogen only with goals retaining the same of Diesel full and part load efficiencies and power and torque outputs. The modelled hydrogen engine has actually better than Diesel fuel efficiencies all over the load range and it also permits better full load power and torque outputs running about same stoichiometry.