New system retrofits diesel engines to run on 90% hydrogen

&gt; The researchers say that any diesel engine used in trucks and power equipment in the transportation, agriculture and mining industries could ultimately be retrofitted to the new hybrid system in just a couple of months.<p>Not sure what they mean here.<p>Is it the tech is a couple of month away from being production ready?<p>Or does it take two months of work effort to retrofit the engine? If so, how many people are working?

New system... well, not really. This is how diesel engines have been run on wood gas for decades. The engine is fitted with a throttle valve and aspires wood gas which is then ignited by a small ignition charge of diesel. The regulator - which normally controls the injection charge - is disconnected and set to a fixed charge more or less equivalent to what is needed to idle the engine. Engine speed is regulated using the throttle valve which controls the amount of aspired wood gas&#x2F;air mixture.<p>The combustible components of wood gas are mostly carbon monoxide with some hydrogen depending on the water content of the wood. Most of it is nitrogen due to wood gas being produced using air.

&gt;Hydrogen production is the family of industrial methods for generating hydrogen gas. As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas and other light hydrocarbons, partial oxidation of heavier hydrocarbons, and coal gasification.<p>Unless there is a something I&#x27;m missing, it seems that large scale hydrogen production isn&#x27;t very &#x27;green&#x27;.

Awesome. There needs to be a federal program in the USA to help (force) every city to convert every single one of their public transport and school buses to hydrogen. Garbage trucks would be a nice bonus.<p>They all go back to a central depot every day&#x2F;night and the amount of pollution their engines put out right next to people every day is staggering. Every time one of them goes by me as a pedestrian makes me gag. Can&#x27;t imagine what that does to someone&#x27;s health over a lifetime.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hydrogen_embrittlement" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hydrogen_embrittlement</a>

It doesn&#x27;t mention whether this changes the power&#x2F;torque output of the engine which is a big consideration for diesel engines

This is not a good idea. You have to expend a lot of energy to create the hydrogen. Then a lot more energy to compress, transport and re-compress at every stage of delivery. To then burn the hydrogen and get yet another terribly inefficient conversion... ugh.

Many of the big mining trucks are diesel-electric. In that case, it would be better to aim for hydrogen fuel-cell-electric power plants.

Compare the IR-absorption spectra of water vapor, and CO2.<p>This retrofit will not have the expected effect on man-made atmospheric warming.

Does hydrogen have safety problems? I’m thinking about “Oh the humanity!”