A rotary engine that burns hydrogen. Doesn’t sound like a good idea.
The rotary engine is in fashion. It has always been among engine lovers and has returned to the media after Mazda, the brand that has most favored this type of mechanics, brought it back to life in the extended-range version of the Mazda MX 30 and opened the door for its use in a sports car.
This mechanism has become famous because it has a huge capacity to generate energy in a very small space. It rotates at very high speeds and produces a very distinctive sound, while operating very smoothly. Mazda RX-7 and RX-8 They became iconic sports cars, but the latter in particular earned a reputation for unreliability.
The big problem is that this engine consumes a lot of fuel (both fuel and oil) and requires careful maintenance. Its operation is based on a triangular rotor that rotates inside a round chamber at a very high speed. The design itself means that the four working stages (intake, compression, explosion and exhaust) are carried out in the chamber in the free spaces between the round rotor and the chamber. Its rotation also leaves or closes the intake and exhaust ports free.
To understand this more clearly, in this video you will learn all the details and see how to use a good oil It is extremely important to ensure the tightness of the system and prevent future failures. Poor maintenance can cause the engine to fail very quickly, but if we follow the instructions exactly, we should not have any problems.
Overall, this engine has a clear advantage: it can generate a lot of power with minimal vibrations in a very small space. The use in an extended-range EV that is still a plug-in hybrid with a very long electric range (or a limited-range EV) is very interesting because it allows jumping from one engine to another, reducing friction between the combustion engine and the electric engine, while increasing its range.
A rotary engine that wants to turn
But Mazda is not alone in its efforts to revive the rotary engine. Astron Aerospace is a company that has long touted the virtues of the rotary engine, which it claims can generate 160 horsepower while weighing an astonishing 15.9 kilograms.
To give us a better idea, the company says its propeller barely exceeds the hundred pieces it consists of, and of course, that’s nowhere near the hundred kilos a car typically weighs. fuel for combustion three-cylinder petrol engine, one of the smallest options on the market.
They claim that this propellant can also be stacked and paired to increase its power. However, it has some surprising problems when it comes to use in the automotive market. It is air-cooled, which calls into question the long-term reliability of the engine. They do not provide consumption or emissions data, which is important now that the European Union is embarking on a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions. And finally, and most obviously, it seems very difficult for the company to invest in a fuel that has little real impact on sales.
Now, Astron Aerospace The company says its rotary engine can also be used to burn hydrogen. Burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine doesn’t require too many changes, but its use in everyday cars seems out of the question. At least as a means of mass transportation.
Hydrogen has some inherent problems when used as a vector of energy to propel a car. An electric car uses between 75% and 80% of the electrical energy it produces from the moment it leaves the turbine to the car’s wheels. When hydrogen is used in a fuel cell system, the efficiency of the same energy path is less than 30%.
But despite everything, this is very far from the data. efficiency burning compressed hydrogen, the content of which remains below 20%. This formula could be a solution to preserve the feel and sound of an internal combustion engine, in fact, Toyota is working on this idea, but there is a serious problem with storing it.
These data are explained by expert Guillermo García Alfonsín on his YouTube channel, where he points out that another big problem with hydrogen, which will be used in an internal combustion engine, is its storage. To equal the energy obtained from 50 liters of gasoline, an electric car would need a battery that occupies a volume of 180 liters. The weight also increases from 37 kg to more than 500 kg with a battery with a capacity of more than 120 kWh, which is necessary to equal the energy contained in 50 liters of fuel.
Although weight is a serious problem for a car, its effects can be reduced by using advanced technology. But what you can’t invent in a car is more space than exists. And in order to equalize the energy provided by 50 liters of fuel with compressed hydrogen (to then burn it), it is necessary to use tanks with a capacity of 320 liters.
That is, burning hydrogen in a highly inefficient car, and especially using the size of a giant electric battery (even the largest on the market do not reach such dimensions), we will hardly achieve a performance comparable to burning 25 liters of fuel. This would force us to spend more time standing at the hydrogen station than behind the wheel. In fact, this is one of the problems that Toyota encountered during its long-distance racing tests and which it wanted to solve with liquid hydrogen. A solution that, due to high logistics costs, also does not seem viable.
Photo | Astron Aerospace
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