Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Fuel cell technology

My son had it on his 350bhp Focus RS.
The Water/Methanol mix, sprayed into the inlet side of the intercooler increases the cooling effect of the intercooler, making the inlet air denser.
Then a second injection of water methanol is injected into each throttle body, so when it gets into the cylinder on the ignition stroke increases the effective octane rating of the petrol allowing a higher boost pressure.
As a further bonus the water is converted, explosively, to steam in the cylinder, increasing power.
In addition to adding power it made the burn much cleaner, so that without a functioning catalyst the emissions were well inside the required limits.

There is a S2 Aero with a hard top floating around with a water injection unit on it, I had a look at it at Richard Thorne's late in 2015. I can't comment on any benefit or otherwise as I only had a short test drive at the time and they didn't have much of an idea about it.

I saw a short tv report last week showing a test done on a hydrogen powered locomotive. It was done on a test track and worked, albeit a short run? The equipment was all inside a carriage and the next step was to modify it to fit beneath the floor. I don’t know if it was fuel cell based or hydrogen gas based.
A diesel train detailed near us a couple of weeks ago. Ruptured tanks spilled a significant volume. Checks are ongoing on the estuary re pollution. There are worries about the local shellfish industry, fish migration, sludge affecting flora/fauna.
A fire was put out despite difficult access.
If it was hydrogen gas then other than initial fire/explosion risk, leakage would be dispersed by winds. Localised air/hydrogen would be risky but as distance increased less so until none.
Having said that I think hydrogen gas tankers would be designed with added safety, as with current ones transporting dangerous materials. Cryogenic stainless steel, double skin, impact resistant cradles/cages.

You may want to read up on metal embrittlement by hydrogen before thinking it's a simple solution.

Interesting thread and something I know enough about to be dangerous.

Firstly, anything other than jet fuel (hydrocarbon) will not have sufficient energy density or power density to be viable for large aircraft - so PERHAPS for small aircraft hydrogen/fuel cells or batteries may work (sort of). Power and energy density are critical to aircraft range and efficiency. No so with automotive use...

Hydrogen is not a good energy vector (moving energy from one place to another) and yes if you have green hydrogen and can extract CO2 from the atmosphere then Fischer-Tropsch to make petrol, diesel or jet fuel makes most sense (BTW FT is already approved for use in aviation!!).

Hydrogen is NOT safe - very wide explosive limits and very high flame speeds (often more like explosive detonation rather than just slow burn) - so risk of explosion higher and damage can be massive compared to say a petrol/diesel explosion. Oh and one big risk (based on industry experience) hard to believe but its true - hydrocarbon fuels fires are always visible (flames, smell and smoke) hydrogen flame isnt colourless, no smake or smell - flame invisible so a risk of walking straight into a H fire without realising unless you happen to spot the heat shimmer.

Hydrogen again energy density is very low and even worse when you add the weight and volume of pressurised tanks and insulation.....

Water and Water Methanol - can be used to boost piston and indeed gas turbine engines. But the main effect is that as the water evaporates you get expansion (and a bit of cooling and slightly increased mass flow for a gas turbine) so more power, but that takes energy - so add just enough methanol (around 38% is the magic number) to add that energy (and some O2 as the methanol dissociates ) back in and you get more power. Used in older gas turbines for short periods to either make up for engine wear or boost for high altitude/hot day take off.

Just a downside that water/methanol can increase exhaust aldehydes and ketones (that sweet to pungent smell you used to get with old carburated cars when cold and on choke) - not nice or good for your health.

Lastly, batteries for aviation and particularly large commercial aircraft. BIG SNAG: when a commercial aircraft takes off there's up to say 100-150 tons of fuel on board - when they land most of thats gone. Aircraft cannot land with full load of fuel on board. Batteries weight the same at landing as at take-off - high landing speeds would be required and massive increase in strength of airframe and undercarriage = weight = loss of efficiency...

Apologies for the long post but I though it was worth weighting in with a few facts......

Saw this the other day in an article about an experiment in running merchant ship engines on ammonia .... quite interesting to see it laid out ....
Gives an idea of the challenges involved in eliminating fossil fuels from our energy landscape.






K

Ps ..... and then you take into account that being 'zero carbon' doesn't equate with being 'clean' or not environmentally damaging (many of the green coloured ones certainly are far from benign !! )

If we must go "Carbon Free" then batteries are the least energy dense, which is why cars carry half a tonne or so of dead weight.

I was surprised at the energy density of Liquid Ammonia, it seems it can be converted in fuel cells.
Interesting article here...

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2014.00035/full

When in the steel industry we used ultrasonic NDT equipment that would detect internal hydrogen cracking that some grades of low alloy steel were susceptible to. Steel for safety critical use was scrapped. We could also detect internal defects in free machining steels due to poor distribution of sulphur or lead.

Yes, there's lots of work going on with ammonia:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360128517302320

https://www.ammoniaenergy.org

And another interesting fuel is iron:

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-iron-powder-alternative-fuel-industry.html

Well known by a few dodgy people and some by mistake....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion