Development of a Hydrogen Powered Medium Duty Truck 871168

Considerable amount of research work on hydrogen fueled engines has been conducted for 17 years in Musashi Institute of Technology. The primary purpose of the research has been to develop a hydrogen powered autmobile, and in order to realized it, various innovations have been applied and tested. The newest outcome of this 17 years research was Musashi-7 Track, which demonstrated its performance in Innovation vehicle Design Competition held in Vancouver in July 1986.

Musashi-7 Track was a modified medium duty truck, which was originally made by Hino Motors, and had a hydrogen powered engine. The track was equipped with 150 ℓ liquid hydrogen (LH₂) tank and 8 MPa high pressure LH₂ pump.

The pump delivered 8 MPa high pressure hydrogen gas to the engine and the fuel was injected to a hot surface igniter in DI combustion chamber. This type of hydrogen enigne has following advantages. Firstly, fuel corrier weight and volume can be much smaller than those of metal-hydrides (MH). Secondly, since the fuel is injected at high pressure, no back-fire, preignition or knocking accurs. thirdly, high compression ratio can be achieved and turbocharging becomes possible, which makes the hydrogen engine as suitable for heavy duty vehicles as diesel engines. In order to take full advanatge of the above characteristics, this most recently developed hydrogen engine was applied to a truck rather than a passenger car and as a result, the very first hydrogen powered truck was successfully introduced.