The car world is gearing up, albeit slowly, for a carbon free future. Most are looking at electric drives, either battery or hydrogen fuel cell powered. But some are trying to retain some benefit from their years of investing in piston engines by converting them to run on hydrogen, BMW being quite keen.
Which is why Morgan has developed the ‘Life’ car, an Aero 8 powered by hydrogen.
But the gas has some ‘challenges’; the main one is storage, it needs either very high pressure tanks or cryogenic (-253.7 ºC) liquid storage.
The other problem is that its energy density is quite poor, so you need a lot of it. If it is injected into the port it displaces quite a lot of air, so power is significantly reduced. But of course this could be tackled by using a bigger engine or turbos, yes its true, with hydrogen you can have a guilt free 8 litre V8!
British company ITM Power have developed a home hydrogen generator, simply add water and plug it into the mains, to prove its usefulness they converted a Focus which gets about 100 miles per fill.
And Sunderland university have used CNG (compressed natural gas, mostly methane) equipment, which is similar to an LPG conversion, with a special tank to run a standard car on Hydrogen.
So with all the old cars on the road, surely someone should start a nationwide business converting them to hydrogen? Imagine generating your own hydrogen from a small wind turbine in your back yard! Free fuel, zero carbon emissions and recycling existing cars, it’s a beautiful dream.