H2 Internal Combustion Engine for Light Commercial Vehicles

In the drive to Net Zero the use of Hydrogen can play an important role in future UK transport. Whilst the majority of work looking at using hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles has been focused on fuel cell there is the potential to use hydrogen as fuel within a conventional internal combustion engine as a means of ensuring rapid market penetration of a ZEV in the LCV market.

There is a large infrastructure in the UK dedicated to producing, servicing and recycling Internal Combustion Engines. It would be of significant benefit to the UK if these facilities could be repurposed to produce net zero internal combustion engines powered by hydrogen.

However, there are significant hydrogen infrastructure, engine and vehicle technical challenges which would also need to be overcome before this could become reality. This project cannot address all these issues but is targeting coming up with cost effective optimised solutions to some of the fundamental issues associated with adapting an internal combustion engine to run on Hydrogen and be a zero emission engine.

The project brings together a consortium of academic institutions, small and medium enterprises, large engineering consultancies, tier 1 part suppliers and a large OEM who specialises in the manufacture of light commercial vehicles. The focus of the project will be demonstrating that a Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine can be a viable alternative to the existing diesel powertrain for use in a Light Commercial Vehicle.

The project will run in two phases, the first building on Brunel University and Mahle Powertrain's experience in running hydrogen powered engines to define the likely challenges and issues associated with running Hydrogen in an Internal Combustion Engine. The data generated by Brunel University will be used by Oxford Brookes University to develop a CAE tool set which will allow the consortium to simulate in cylinder hydrogen combustion and emissions.

In Phase 2 using the tools and knowledge developed in Phase 1 the consortium will then design and manufacture several options for of single cylinder engine which will then be tested at Brunel. It is hoped that these engines will address the majority of issues associated with Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines.

It is hoped that this project will form the basis of a larger project to put the multi cylinder hydrogen powered combustion engine into production.