Efficient hydrogen propulsion and aftertreatment for transportation

Research Project, 2021 – 2022

This project proposal is a collaboration between Lucien Koopmans and Jonas Sjöblom at Combustion and Propulsion Systems and Louise Olsson and Derek Creaser at Chemical Engineering. This project can be a start of a new research area for hydrogen engines. It is of outmost importance to move to fossil free transportation and in the future, renewable energy could make large H2 production feasible. As discussed on the last SVT day, it is a very interesting approach to use H2 engines, since they have observed to have a good efficiency and quite low price. In addition, they are likely not so sensitive regarding the quality of the hydrogen. However, since the temperature is high during combustion, NOx will still be formed and must be removed. This is a very interesting concept for the future, but several research questions remain. For example, hydrogen's chemical and physical properties make it difficult to control in the combustion chamber and unwanted combustion phenomena such as cracking and uncontrolled (pre) ignition might occur. Therefore large amount of air is needed in the combustion which will result in exhausts with low temperature and the presence of toxic nitrogen oxides (NOx). The aim of this project is to study the full system with hydrogen engine coupled with a full scale aftertreatment system at  Combustion and Propulsion Systems. The results from this system will be used as input for further catalyst development at Chemical Engineering. We foresee large synergies by starting this new collaboration and research area at Chalmers.