Liebherr’s managing director of its combustion engine business unit, Stefanie Gerhardt, has outlined four major hurdles to resolve before hydrogen can become mainstream.
Gerhardt asserted that hydrogen combustion engines can be used everywhere where electrically powered machines and hydrogen fuel cells reach their limit. And she suggested that they would be particularly useful in construction applications where economy, robustness, and high performance are required.
1) Combustion technology. While diesel burns in a stable and controlled manner, hydrogen combustion is more sensitive to mixture quality and local hotspots, and this can lead to abnormal combustion such as pre-ignition, knocking or backfires, all of which need to be avoided to ensure an engine’s reliability.
2) Lubrication. Another technical challenge involved in developing hydrogen combustion engines comes with ensuring that they are lubricated correctly.
3) Availability of hydrogen fuel. Chief among the challenges is the availability of the fuel itself. “The hydrogen supply network is not yet developed enough so that every customer who wishes to operate a vehicle off highway and also on highway gets an easy access to it,” Gerhardt said.
4) Sustainability of hydrogen fuel. Meanwhile, hydrogen fuel will only count as a low-emission fuel if it is “clean” hydrogen. That means producing it using electricity generated from renewable sources.
Source: International Construction: Read The Article
PSR Analysis: While the article is fairly high level it clearly identifies the main issues, some of which will take considerable time and investment to overcome, but it’s useful as this comes from someone who is clearly invested in hydrogen. PSR
Guy Youngs is Forecast & Adoption Lead at Power Systems Research
