Performance Evaluation of Hydrogen-Fuelled Internal Combustion Engine

For development in alternate energy sources basket and the adverse effects of the emissions from the fossil fuels on environment and life forms, research towards developing alternate energy that can be used for both transportation and power generation has gained momentum. As the world advances towards the sustainable solutions, development of more environment-friendly fuel, and substituting it for the conventional fossil fuels, becomes the need of the hour. The hydrocarbon-based fuels, viz. petrol, diesel, etc., are being used as the major sources of energy since the past decades. They are being used for both power generation and transportation. Burning of these alternative fuels results in the emission of CO₂ and other species which are harmful to the nature. Moreover, carbon dioxide, which is the major contributor to the greenhouse effect, is a big concern. From the alternate energy sources basket, hydrogen is the most versatile, the most eco-friendly and the most promising substitute for conventional fossil fuels. It is one of the most prominent alternatives for carbon-based fossil fuels. The main reasons behind hydrogen as the most sought fuel are its easy availability, less harmful (or no carbon) emissions and its high energy content. Several barriers have to be overcome before the marketization of hydrogen as a transport fuel for internal combustion engines. Apart from having uncountable advantages over fossil fuels, hydrogen as a fuel has limitations also such as backfire, moisture ingress in engine oil and high NO_x emissions. However, the problem of backfire can be worked upon by developing better fuel injection technologies, and the problem of moisture ingress and high NO_x emission can be studied and thus worked upon by running the engine performance test for 100 h as per IS 10,000 (part IV). Also, although theoretically combustion of hydrogen results only in the formation of water as a by-product, researches have revealed that on combustion of hydrogen in SI engine, a small amount of NO_x, CO, PN, CO₂ is also produced. These may be due to the engine oil. Thus, the following paper focuses on a series of experimental investigations performed on a commercial genset fuelled with pure hydrogen fuel and coupled with a four cylinders internal combustion engine. The experiments were performed to evaluate the durability of the dedicated lubricant developed for the H₂-fuelled genset and to study the performance of the genset for 100 h under cyclic conditions along with periodic performance and emission tests at every 48 h.