PERFORMANCE AND EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF A

HYDROGEN FUELED S.I ENGINE

G. Magesh 1, K. Purushothaman 2, K. M. Prabhu 3, Ankit Sonthalia 4, C. Ramesh Kumar 5
ABSTRACT
The use of hydrogen as a fuel for the internal
combustion engine represents an alternative to
solve both of the biggest problems related to the
use of fossil fuels i.e.,the limited fossil fuels and
the environment pollution. Compared to the
hydrocarbons, hydrogen has very large
flammability limits (in normal conditions 4 to
75% vol.), a high flame propagation velocity (5
to 8 times higher) and a low value of the
minimum ignition energy (approximately 10
times less). All these properties strongly
designate hydrogen as a favorable fuel to be
used in engines. Hydrogen has excellent
prospects to achieve satisfactory performance in
engine applications that may be superior in
many aspects to those with fossil fuels. A
number of design and operational changes
needed to effect the full potential of hydrogen as
an engine fuel.
In the present work,experiments were conducted
on a single cylinder, four stroke, spark ignition
engine operating with hydrogen as a fuel.
Hydrogen was injected through the intake
manifold into the engine. To vary the output, the
loads were varied and the engine was run on
wide open throttle (WOT). For each output,
performance,
emission
and
combustion
parameters were recorded and analyzed . For
comparison of results, with the same engine, the
experiments were also conducted with gasoline
as a fuel. It was observed that the hydrogen
engine produces less maximum power when
compared to gasoline. It was also found that
efficiency of hydrogen engine was higher than
that of gasoline engine. Exhaust emission in
hydrogen engine was almost negligible at lower
loads. But at higher loads, NOx emissions was
found to be increasing rapidly.

INTRODUCTION
Hydrogen has long been recognized as a fuel
having some unique and highly desirable
properties, for application as a fuel in engines. It
is the only fuel that can be produced entirely from
the plentiful renewable resource water, albeit
through the expenditure of relatively much
energy. Its combustion in oxygen produces
uniquely only water but in air it also produces
some oxides of nitrogen. These features make
hydrogen an excellent fuel to potentially meet the
ever increasingly stringent environmental controls
of exhaust emissions from combustion devices,
including the reduction of green house gas
emissions. Hydrogen as a renewable fuel resource
can be produced through the expenditure of
energy to replace increasingly the depleting
sources of conventional fossil fuels [1].
Hydrogen is the simplest and lightest fuel known
to mankind. It is by far the most plentiful element
in the universe, making up 75% of the mass of all
visible matter in stars and galaxies. At room
temperature it is a colorless and odourless gas
having a density of 0.0899 kg/m3. Hydrogen boils
at -252.77 C and its liquid form has a density of
0.071 kg/m3. The theoritical combustion of
hydrogen in air is given by the following chemical
equation:
2H2O + 3.76 N2
2H2 + O2 +3.76N2
From the equation it can be calculated that the
stoichiometric air\fuel ratio by mass is 34:1. Table
1 compares the properteis of hydrogen as a fuel
with gasoline and methane. Hydrogen has several
properties, which make it a very attractive
alternate source of fuel for IC engines, its highest
calorific value being the most important.
Hydrogen has the highest energy content per unit
weight. It has a very high range of flammability
and burns in air at a concentration of 4-75% by
volume. Hence a hydrogen engine can be operated

1,2,3,4Students,SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore;5Sr.Asst.Prof./SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore

on very lean mixtures and also combusted over

a wide range of fuel air mixtures[2].
Table 1 Properties of Hydrogen, Metane and Gasoline
Property

Hydrogen

Methane

Gasoline

Density at 1atm and

300k (kg/m3)

0.082

0.717

5.11

Stoichiometric
Composition in air
(% by volume)

29.53

9.48

1.65

Stoischiometric fuel
air mass ratio

0.029

0.058

0.0664

Higher heating
value(MJ/kg)

141.7

52.68

48.29

Lower heating
value(MJ/kg)

119.7

46.72

44.79

110

17.2

1.18

182.0

34.0

11.2

0.61

0.189

0.05

Flammability limits
(% by vlome)

4-75

5.3-15.0

1.2-6.0

Minimum Ignition
Energy (mJ)

0.02

0.28

0.25

Kinematic Viscosity
at 300K(mm2/s)
Thermal
Coonductivity at
300K (mW/ m K)
Diffusion
Coefficient of air at
NTP(cm2/s)

Laminar flame speed

at NTP (m/s)

1.90

0.38

0.370.43

Adiabatic Flame
Temperature (K)

2318

2190

~2470

Auto Ignition
Temperature (K)

858

813

~500750

Quenching Gap at
NTP (mm)

0.64

2.03

~2.0

The ignition energy required for hydrogen is

very low. It is nearly 10 times less than that of
gasoline and 15 times less than that of methane.
So, it is easy to ignite the hydrogen with a
relatively weak spark. However, any hotspot in
the combustion chamber may become a source

of ignition and may cause preignition. The

autoignition temperature of hydrogen is greater
than that of gasoline. Hydrogen has a very high
flame speed over a wide range of temperature and
pressures. This higher flame speed results in
higher rate of pressure rise in hydrogen fuelled
engines and the combustion is almost
instantaneous. Thus, nearly constant volume
combustion can be achieved. Cyclic variations are
very low compared to other fules with hydrogen.
This is because of high flame speed and wide
ignition limits and perfect homogeneous mixture
[3].
Hydrogen gives almost zero CO, CO2 and HC
emission as it does not contain any hydrocarbons,
but one of the major issues associated with
hydrogen being used as a fuel is NOx emissions.
Hydrogen engine gives low NOx at low loads but
it increases to very high levels at high loads[4].
Exhaust gas recirculation along with a 3-way
catalytic converter has been tried [5,6] to reduce
NOx emissions and it was found that NOx could
be reduced to less than 1 ppm. However, this lead
to significant reduction in the torque produced by
the engine. So, it was found that if NOx are not
important then lean burn mixture can be used but
this produced a large amount of NOx emission so
trade off has to be made between EGR and lean
burn mixture.
Backfiring is a particularly tenacious obstacle to
the development of hydrogen engines. Hot spots
have been cited as one of the major reasons for
backfiring. Preignition is often encountered in
hydrogen engines because of the low ignition
energy and wide flammability limits of hydrogen.
As a premature ignition causes the mixture to
burn mostly during the compression stroke, the
temperature in the combustion chamber rises,
which causes the hot spot that led to the preignition to increase in temperature, resulting in
another, earlier, pre-ignition in the next cycle.
This advancement of the pre-ignition continues
until it occurs during the intake stroke and causes
backfire. The mechanism is termed a runaway
pre-ignition and can also result from a knocking

1,2,3,4Students,SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore;5Sr.Asst.Prof./SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore

cycle, increasing the chamber temperature and

creating a hot spot [7].
PRESENT WORK
In the present investigation an SI engine was
converted to operate with hydrigen as a fuel.
With hydrogen as fuel the engine was always
operated with wide open throttle at 2500 rpm.
Brake power (engine output) was varied by
changing the hydrogen flow rate. The base line
experiment was conducted using gasoline, with
out changing factory set carburetor settings. For
every power output performance, emissions and
combustion parameters were recorded and
analyzed.

hydrogen was passed through it. A flame trap was

fabricated and filled with one third of water in it
and hydrogen at 2.5 bar pressure. Hydrogen was
supplied through the bottom so that it will bubble
through water and get collected at the top of the
trap container. A flexible hose was used for
injecting the hydrogen gas into inlet manifold
after carburetor through a specially designed and
fabricated needle.

EXPERIMENTAL WORK
The specification of the engine is given in
appendix. Dry exhaust gas trapped from the
exhaust manifold was used to measure exhaust
emissions. A pc based data system was used to
read cylinder pressure from a piezoelectric
pressure sensor mounted in the cylinder head.
Pressure at every crank angle was recorded.
TDC point was also traced along with pressure
data from a proximity sensor fitted near the
coupling. The data was then analyzed and
processed.
Figure 1 shows the experimental setup.
Hydrogen cylinder with 42 liters standard water
volume at 160 bar pressure was used during the
experiment. Gaseous hydrogen was fed into the
engine and a regulator was used to bring down
the pressure of hydrogen from 150 bars to 2
bars. In this work the outlet pressure was
adjusted to 2.5 bars and was kept constant for all
the loads. The flow of hydrogen is controlled by
using an additional needle valve.
A rotameter was used to measure mass flow rate
of the hydrogen. The major drawback of
hydrogen engine is to back fire so, in order to
arrest that, flame trap is used as shown in figure
2. It was located in between the hydrogen
cylinder and engine. The required flow of

Figure 1 Experimental Setup

Figure 2 Flame Trap

An air surge tank was connected to the inlet

manifold to reduce the flow fluctuations while
measuring air flow rate. A U tube manometer was
used to measure the air flow rate.

1,2,3,4Students,SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore;5Sr.Asst.Prof./SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore

The manifold pressure is continuously

monitored, since it is designed to operate at
lower pressure. All the plastic components are
removed from the manifold assembly and are
replaced with cast iron.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The brake power of the hydrogen engine was
varied by varying the hydrogen flow rate in the
intake manifold and with wide open throttle
throughout the experiment. The engine was run
on gasoline and the power output was varied by
varying the throttle. It was found that for
gasoline, the engine gave a maximum brake
power of 6.28 kW and on hydrogen mode the
engine was operated to a maximum brake power
of 4.71 kW without knocking.
The engine started knocking at higher loads, the
reason is mainly attributed to the higher
concentration of hydrogen at 2.5 bar pressure
which back fires quickly and easily due to hot
spots present in the combustion chamber and the
increased rate of pressure rise. Since, the
engine is designed to run on gasoline fuel, its
combustion chamber is designed in such a way
to minimize the flame travel. The best suited
combustion chamber for hydrogen is a disc
shaped combustion chamber.
Figure 3 shows the variation of brake thermal
efficiency with brake power output. It is seen
that hydrogen is more efficient than gasoline at
all the operating points, even at low power
output hydrogen gave a better thermal efficiency
than gasoline. This can be attributed to low
pumping losses, since the engine was run with
wide open throttle. At higher brake power
output, the flame speed increases with the
increase in equivalence ratio thus giving almost
constant volume combustion, resulting in higher
brake thermal efficiency. At all the loads a
leaner mixture is used compared to gasoline
thus resulting in better thermal efficiency.

Figure 3 Variation of Brake Thermal Efficiency with Brake

Power

Figure 4 shows the variation of equivalence ratio

with brake power for gasoline and hydrogen fuel.
At lower load the engine runs at the highest
equivalent ratio for hydrogen and it goes on
decreasing with the increase in the load. The
engine was operating smoothly for higher
equivalence ratio (i.e for lean mixture). For
gasoline fuel the equivalence ratio was kept
almost constant near stoichiometric as very lean
mixtures could stall the engine.

Figure 4 Variation of Equivalence Ratio with Brake Power

Figure 5 shows the variation of exhaust gas

temperature with brake power for gasoline and
hydrogen fuel. At lower load, exhaust gas
temperature for hydrogen is less and it increases
almost linearly with load but it never reaches the
exhaust gas temperature of gasoline for any load.
This can be attributed to the lean mixture used in
hydrogen fuelled engine. As the combustion takes
place in closer to TDC there is very limited time
for the combustion. This approximates a constant

1,2,3,4Students,SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore;5Sr.Asst.Prof./SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore

volume combustion. The temperature increases

rapidly due to the constant volume combustion
process and this contributes to higher NOx
production in the combustion chamber.

full load. At lower load, the mixture used is

extremely lean due to which the peak temperature
reached during combustion is less, this results in
very less NOX emission as seen in figure 7.
However, at higher loads, the flame speed is very
high resulting in higher peak temperatures.

Figure 5 Variation of exhaust gas temperature with Brake

Power

Figure 6 shows the variation of surface

temperature with brake power. For both
gasoline and hydrogen temperature increases
almost linearly with loads. At higher loads
temperature for both hydrogen and gasoline is
almost equal. Surface Temperature reaches 150
C for hydrogen and 170 C for gasoline at
higher loads.

Figure 7 Variation of NOX with Brake Power

Figure 8 shows the variation of unburned
hydrocarbon with brake power for gasoline. The
hydrogen fuel engine did not produce any unburnt
hydrocarbon as it does not contain any carbon.
Gasoline UBHC emission reduced with the
increase in load.

S U R F A C E T E M P E R A T U R E

200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60

G as oline

40
20
0

Hydrogen

3
4
BP (K W)

Figure 6 Variation of surface temperature with Brake

Power

Figure 7 shows the variation of NOX with brake

power. NOX emission is almost negligible upto
a power output of 2.3 kW but after that it rises
up abruptly and reaches a maximum value of
3600 ppm. Gasoline NOX emission on the other
side reaches a maximum value of 1000 ppm at

Figure 8 Variation of unburned hydrocarbon with brake

power

1,2,3,4Students,SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore;5Sr.Asst.Prof./SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore

CONCLUSION
SI engines can be run with hydrogen fuel
without any difficulty. As hydrogen does not
contain carbon, no unburned hydrocarbon
emissions were found in the exhaust, which is a
major air pollutant forming photochemical
smog. NOX emissions were very low at low
loads but it shot up at higher loads which can be
reduced by the use of exhaust gas recirculation.
Another phenomenon which has to be addressed
is knocking. At higher brake power output,
above 4.71 kW the engine started knocking, this
limits the use of hydrogen as a fuel for higher
loads. The can be overcome with small
modifications in engine like increasing the
flame travel distance in the combustion
chamber, EGR, Spark plug location, Ignition
timing etc.
REFRENCES
1. Ghazi A. Karim, Hydrogen as a spark
ignition engine fuel, Int. J. of Hydrogen
Energy, 28, pp.569-577, 2003.
2. M. K. Mahesh, Neelu, C. Prakash, G.
Vishwanathan, Review of fuel induction
technologies for automotive hydrogen
propulsion, SAE paper, 2005-26-350,
2005.
3. V. Subramanian, J. M. Mallikarjuna, A.
Ramesh, Performance emission and
combustion characteristics of a hydrogen
fuelled SI engine an experimental study,
SAE paper, 2005-26-349, 2005.
4. Robert J. Natkin, Xiaoguo Tang, Brad
Boyer, Bret Oltmans and Adam Denlinger,
James W. Heffel, Hydrogen IC Engine
Boosting Performance and NOx Study,
SAE paper, 2003-01-0631, 2003.
5. James W. Heffel, NOx emission and
performance data for a hydrogen fueled
internal combustion engine at 1500 rpm
using exhaust gas recirculation, Int. J. of
Hydrogen Energy, 28, pp.901-908, 2003.
6. James W. Heffel, NOx emission and
performance data for a hydrogen fueled

internal combustion engine at 3000 rpm using

exhaust gas recirculation, Int. J. of Hydrogen
Energy, 28, pp.1285-1292, 2003.
7. Sebastian Verhelst, Roger Sierens, Stefaan
Verstraeten, A Critical Review of
Experimental Research on Hydrogen Fueled
SI Engines, SAE paper, 2006-01-0430, 2006.
APPENDIX

Table 2 Engine Specification

Make

Briggs & Stratton

Type

Single Cylinder, 4 stroke, air

cooled, OHV engine

Fuel

Hydrogen and petrol

No. of cylinders

One

Bore * Stroke

79.25*61.67 mm

Displacement
Volume

305 cm3

Compression
Ratio

8:1

Rated Power

10 hp

Governor

Mechanical

Method of
loading

Eddy Current Dynamometer

1,2,3,4Students,SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore;5Sr.Asst.Prof./SMBS,VITUniversity,Vellore