Hydrogen Future Vs. 6 Cycle Engine Present

I’ve been reading some funny stuff from people who have some pretty strong opinions on our future energy sources. This has lead me to do some research into what is happening right now with, let’s be honest, our future and livelihood.

Well for starters some people seem to think that hydrogen is the be all and end all of our energy worries. Well on the surface it has a pretty good argument. It can be produced from renewable sources, such as wind turbines, hydro turbines etc by electrolysis. its only waste product is water from a fuel cell and has the potential to be the greenest of the green fuels.

There are however some problems with using hydrogen as a fuel, lets say, to replace my petrol car with a fuel cell car. Well my main concern being an end user, is the cost and availability of fuel cell cars. At the time of writing, Honda are the only manufacturer of a fuel cell car, which they are only leasing at $600 a month in southern California. This is a problem to me, because I live in England, and don’t have $600 a month to have the privilege.

Next problem. Can I drive 250 miles from Cheltenham to Darlington on a tank full of hydrogen? Well yes, probably, but where do I get a tank full from? Honda have a solution to the lack of hydrogen fuel stations. Its called the Home Energy Station. This device converts natural gas into heat, electricity and a supply of hydrogen gas to power your car. This is good if you use your car for short journeys and running about, but still falls short of being able to fuel your car for longer journeys.

The fact that natural gas is still used to generate the hydrogen leads to the question, is this better than existing technologies? Well on the surface, yes, it is. But dig deeper and you realise that it isn’t really. For example, the six stroke engine. Sounds futuristic, doesn’t it? Well basically, it’s a four stroke engine that’s had the exhaust cam speed reduced by a third, and en extra injector. To inject, Water?

Well it works like this. Air/fuel mixture is let into the engine through the inlet valve. Conventional. The mixture is compressed and ignited. Basically a four stroke engine. Then the clever bit. Instead of letting the burned gasses out of the exhaust valve, water is injected into the red hot gasses. This flashes of into steam, expanding to 40 its original volume. Those of you who know how a steam engine works will realise what will happen. The piston is then forced back down to create a second power stroke without burning any more fuel. The gas mixture is then let out the exhaust valve as in a conventional engine.

The utilisation of the heat generated by the exploding gas increases the efficiency of the engine by 40%. Based on the average four stroke at 30% efficiency, this would create an engine that is up to 70% efficient, just 20% short of an electric motor. This also eliminates the need of a cooling system saving cost, weight and complexity of the engine.

This raises another question. What happens to the water? Well, add a condenser to cool the water, and simply reuse. Obviously there would be some losses of water, but no more than coolant in an existing four stroke engine.

The biggest plus for this six stroke engine is the infrastructure. Its already there. Oil refineries, pipelines and distribution stations. Manufacturers redesign engines every year, and how much extra will these simple modifications cost? Well the cost of a redesign, because it makes use of everything already produced by the manufacturer, just rearranged. This should be the next step to “green” energy, while the hydrogen infrastructure is being developed over the next few decades