16 ноя 2022 г. - (US) Collaboration Wabtec & ANL to develop H2 combustion engine for rail

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American locomotive manufacturer Wabtec and researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) will work on a collaborative research to develop locomotives powered by a hydrogen combustion engine. Software developer Convergent Science will also work on the project, being specialised in computational fluid dynamics and simulations.

Trains running on hydrogen fuel cells are already running, the first ones having entered regular passenger service in Germany earlier this year. For hydrogen combustion engines, application in rail is not yet the case. The difference between the two is that with fuel cell trains, although the energy source is hydrogen, the trains run on electrical power. In the fuel cell, heat is generated by cold combustion in which hydrogen and oxygen react, and this is converted into electrical energy which is transferred to the traction battery. A hydrogen combustion engine for trains works more similarly to the engine of diesel trains, which are the ones that will have to be replaced in order to become climate-neutral.

Although on a small scale, there are already cars running on a hydrogen combustion engine, but no trains with this technology have been fully developed. “While hydrogen has been used in light-duty combustion engines, it is still a very new area of research in railway applications”, said Muhsin Ameen, Argonne senior research scientist. The Argonne National Laboratory is part of the U.S. Department of Energy.

“To reduce carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050, we must make dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and emissions in the overall transportation system, including railways”, said Ameen. Hydrogen can be a low-emission fuel, however that mainly depends on the source of the energy used to create the fuel. Coming from sustainably sourced wind or solar power it can reach near-zero-emissions, but the majority of hydrogen currently produced is ‘grey hydrogen’, produced with energy from fossil fuels. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), over 95 percent of hydrogen production is fossil-fuel based, as of the end of 2021.

https://www.railtech.com/rolling-stock/2022/11/16/us-research-project-to-develop-hydrogen-combustion-engine-for-rail/?gdpr=accept

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