Posted on Tuesday 15 April 2008
BMW has unveiled a new internal combustion engine design that not only produces near zero emissions, but it apparently absorbs and burns ambient air pollutants as well. The ultra-clean engine debuts in the new mono-fuel Hydrogen 7 saloon and is on display at this week’s SAE World Congress meeting in Detroit.
Based on the original V12-powered BMW Hydrogen 7 bi-fuel version (petrol and hydrogen), the new mono-fuel vehicle’s internal combustion engine is optimized to run solely on hydrogen and is said to deliver the same performance, comfort, and safety as a regular production BMW 7 Series plus better mileage than its predecessor.
Since the consumed hydrogen has no carbon, the engine itself would produce no CO2, hydrocarbons, or other pollutants. However, BMW claims the existing pollutants in the surrounding air are consumed by the engine as well as small amounts of lubricating oil. After the burn process there are virtually zero exhaust emissions. In fact, according to BMW’s own testing the exhaust coming out of the tailpipe was actually cleaner than the ambient air going in.
In initial testing, the Hydrogen 7’s engine actually shows emissions levels that, for certain components, such as Non Methane Organic Gases (NMOG’s) and Carbon Monoxides (CO’s), are cleaner than the ambient air that comes into the car’s engine.
BMW has been developing hydrogen technology more than 25 years and claims it’s the most logical energy carrier of the future for three key reasons. First, it has no carbon and therefore hydrogen combustion generates no CO2, hydrocarbons and other pollutants. Second, it can be produced using renewable, clean technologies like solar, wind, geothermal, and bio-processes. And lastly, it can be produced in stable areas of the globe as necessary for energy security.
The Hydrogen 7 mono-fuel is a demonstration production vehicle, not a prototype, and was created to showcase the clean energy potential and feasibility of a hydrogen internal combustion engine.
and the vehicle would only cost about 2 million dollars to the average consumer.
economies of scale
“it can be produced in stable areas of the globe as necessary for energy security” +1
Semi useless car just became totaly useless.
As usual, BMW keeps logic. The son ought to be the main electrecy energy source while hydrogen extracted from water will serve as energy storage mean.
There is no magic here. Anybody who can design a gasoline engine can design a hydrogen engine. The problem is the safe storage of large amounts of hydrogen in the vehicle. We need to develop low-pressure hydrogen absorbing materials that hold 10x more hydrogen than currently available materials. The other problem, of course, is there are no hydrogen fueling stations. Still, hydrogen is definitely the way to go. We just need to build more nuclear power plants to convert water into hydrogen (or nuclear plants that produce hydrogen directly). Ultimately we need a nuclear/hydrogen based economy.
Think about it: why would you use electricity to produce hydrogen, which you then convert back to electricity? It’s just much less economical than just directly storing the electricity in a battery. I know hydrogen cars are very cool and electric vehicles are not, but EVs are the future.