Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in hydrogen-engine experiments. gm and Ford argued about which would have the greatest increases in fuel mileage.
It is powered by a hydrogen fuel-cell engine, which converts hydrogen gas into energy.
This week it unveiled a prototype version of its 7-Series saloon car that has a hydrogen-powered engine.
The technology isn't new-a patent for a hydrogen internal combustion engine was issued in 1928, and a 20hp fuel-cell tractor was demonstrated in the late 1950s.
It's powered by a hydrogen internal combustion engine that turns a 44-kilowatt electric generator that runs eight propellers and whatever communications equipment is loaded on board.
To hear ecotopians talk, you'd think the idea of running an engine on hydrogen was new.
And so there's a tendency in the cockpit--I can remember this myself in--on Columbia in 1996 when we had a potentially very dangerous hydrogen leak in the aft engine compartment.
Converting an engine to run on hydrogen is relatively simple.
There is, however, an alternative: burn the hydrogen in a conventional internal-combustion engine.
Because hydrogen can clean the exhaust right from a cold engine start, the plasma reformer method is 20% to 50% more efficient at reducing NOx than other clean-diesel technologies, allowing less unburned fuel to pass through in the process.
This is drawn into the engine, compressed and mixed explosively with a small amount of hydrogen.
But the problem is that it takes a lot of natural gas to isolate the hydrogen, leaving many to say that it would be more productive to just combust the natural gas in a conventional engine.
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