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Sunderland engineers create hydrogen fuelled prototype car

Hydrogen fuelled cars have quickly progressed from drawing board to test track, through a European funded research program supported by a team of top engineers at the University of Sunderland’s Institute for Automotive and Manufacturing Advanced Practice (AMAP).

AMAP has created a prototype car, with an engine adapted to mix hydrogen with traditional fuel, to demonstrate the technology in practice as part of an EU project with Gateshead College.

The purpose of AMAP’s research is to reduce the damage caused by fossil fuels in automotives, with their harmful impact on health and the environment. Early findings of the hydrogen-fuelled vehicle in action have revealed reductions in environmental impact and improvements in fuel economy.

Research results will be shared at the HyTrEc Conference in Aberdeen on 20 and 21 May 2015. HyTrEc – which stands for Hydrogen Transport Economy for the North Sea Region – has arranged the conference to mark the projects’ conclusion.

Over the two days delegates from industry, government, public sector and academia will meet to network and discuss the next steps for the sector. Delegates will include project partners and organisations such as Hyundai UK, the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, UK H2 Mobility and the German National Hydrogen Organisation (NOW Gmbh).

Dirk Kok, Research Fellow at AMAP and project lead technologist, said: “We estimated the range of the hydrogen tank in the demonstrator vehicle to be 120 miles with a 50/50 petrol / hydrogen mix, which is more than enough to carry out deliveries around a city during one day.

“Mixing hydrogen into the fuel stream dramatically improves emissions performance and range per tank of fuel. This is important not only for environmental reasons but because this element of the fuel stream is the most heavily taxed.

“Adding more hydrogen into the fuel stream may not improve matters further and indeed the optimum may be around 35% to 40%. More testing will be required to establish this.

Roger O’Brien, Director of AMAP at the University of Sunderland added: “The relatively low cost of the conversion suggests that this may prove a viable option for cleaning up petrol tailpipe emissions.

“We are considering combining this with other technologies in future to provide for methods of switching to lower emission regimes in urban and city centre areas -where stop-start driving is even more polluting.

“There are still infrastructure issues of course, but for fleet operators, who are doing routes from a central hub or depot, the technology we have used could be a deployable solution very quickly and easily.”