Clean fuels

2000/01/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ingurumena

A group of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invented a new way to reduce car pollution: to incorporate hydrogen enriched gas into the traditional system. Hydrogen enables more efficient combustion of gasoline or diesel and reduces the generation of nitrogen oxides.

Due to the difficulty of storing hydrogen, engineers have developed a system that will produce hydrogen. In the bottle called "Plasmaton" the mixture of air and hydrocarbons is ionized and a hot plasma is formed. Plasma is partially oxidized forming carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Then the combustion of gasoline is done as usual, but instead of just using air, air and hydrogen will be used. The additional energy needed to produce hydrogen is compensated by better combustion of gasoline.

The advantage of the new system is not energy, it is beneficial for the environment, since the use of hydrogen reduces by 90% the emission of pollutants to the exhaust. With this system, low quality fuel becomes a high quality fuel and pollution levels decrease.