Korea invents new fuel we don’t know about in US goodbye to refueling gasoline

EcoNews carries an article about Korea which has invented a new fuel, Caliber.Az reprints the article.

Electric mobility is a source of opportunities for the transportation sector, but also of problems (you know what the insurance companies think). While we in America are still battling Chinese competition, now comes a new fuel from Korea that wants to break the market: no more filling up with gasoline, and no more of the high cost of stopping at the gas station.

Korea has invented a new fuel: we hardly know about it in the US

The auto industry is getting into top gear vehicles running on different emissions friendly fuels which can replace gasoline. Tesla and other electric cars have made great strides but still have issues such as limited travel distances and recharging duration.

How Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles are an option let us understand how hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a zero-emission option though have presented issues of high cost and lack of fueling infrastructure. Hydrogen combustion engine is a new innovative hydrogen application that has been developed in Korea to help solve this.

Contrary to the fuel cell which uses hydrogen to generate electricity for powering machines in this technology the pure hydrogen is bunt in an internal combustion engine. Examples from Hyundai and Kia indicate that first prototypes of this new hydrogen engine can offer similar ranges and the same refueling times as gasoline.

How does this new hydrogen engine work? Goodbye to EVs and Tesla

Korea announces the unveiling of an internal combustion engine that only uses 100 per cent hydrogen gas as fuel. As compared to other hydrogen vehicles that use fuel cells for burning the fuel, this engine employs internal combustion to ignite the hydrogen – as it does for petrol.

Air and fuel are mixed into the gas cylinder and the cylinder is heated up using an electric spark plug which in turn provides power to drive the pistons. This advanced combustion of hydrogen and air means that there are only beneficial emissions of water vapor.

It is a prototype of 180-200 horsepower 2-liter hydrogen engine. For one thing the first tests have indicated that torque and power curves are comparable to the equivalent gasoline engines in size while the fuel consumption looks very attractive.

This engine design removes the need of fuel cell system of hydrogen cars whose counter parts may be quite complex and expensive. Fuel cells are electrochemical devices which converts hydrogen to electricity to propel the electric motor.

Why are we talking about the end of electricity? Three key advantages of this new fuel

The electric vehicles have been considered to be the future, but now we have reached to a quite different situation because of this three advantages of hydrogen as a fuel:

First, hydrogen vehicles eliminate the need for a heavy battery pack and some of the batteries in electric vehicles. The fuel cell stack that converts hydrogen to electricity is much more compact and lighter than a lithium-ion battery with a power train with similar range.

Another factor is that it only takes 3 to 5 minutes to refuel a hydrogen vehicle at a hydrogen station just the same as it takes to refuel a gasoline vehicle. EV charging is significantly slower compared with these comparison assets. A halfway charge on the superfast charger may even take 15-30 minutes.

Third, hydrogen has an energy density at least 3 times greater compared to batteries. For instance, a typical Mirai or Nexo tank of hydrogen has energy content equivalent at least to 5-7 gallons of gasoline but weighs much less. The distance between one fill can go is 2-3 times longer than that of most EVs.

As far as we have been able to see, hydrogen as a fuel is an opportunity to decarbonize the sector, but it is reserved for a longer time horizon than electricity. Just look at the opinion of brands like Tesla or BYD (our Chinese rival), or also the bad experience they have had from Volskwagen. The only thing we can conclude from this is that innovation takes time, don’t you think?