Hydrogen–natural gas blends fuelling passenger car engines: Combustion, emissions and well-to-wheels assessment

In this study, a state of the art passenger car natural gas engine was optimized for hydrogen–natural gas mixtures and high exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) rates in the major part of the engine map. The investigations involved stoichiometric combustion. With optimal combinations of spark timing and EGR rate, the achievements are efficiency increase with substantially lower engine-out NOx while total unburned hydrocarbons or CO-engine-out emissions are only modestly affected. The efficiency is increased by 3% in the low load and by more than 5% in the medium-load domain. Increasing hydrogen content of the fuel accelerates combustion leading to the efficiency improvements. Combustion analysis showed that the increasing burning rates mainly affected the initial combustion phase (duration for 5% mass-fraction burned). Nevertheless, increase of the hydrogen fraction in the fuel over a certain threshold did not result in any efficiency increase in the medium loads. Loss analysis identified high wall heat losses as the main reason. Dedicated combustion chamber design may be able to avoid these losses and lead to additional efficiency benefits. Well-to-wheel analysis revealed paths for the production of the fuel blends still having overall energy requirements slightly higher than a diesel benchmark vehicle but reducing by 7% overall green house gas emissions.