USA – This year’s edition of the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo featured a more balanced range of driveline technologies, from battery and fuel cell electric at one end of the scale to propane, natural gas, and hydrogen combustion at the other. However, decarbonising the internal combustion engine is not as simple as replacing diesel with a different fuel; the different combustion characteristics of natural gas and hydrogen require alterations be made to the engine so that it works optimally with the new fuel type. One company which has thought long and hard about how to make these necessary tweaks is Eaton Corp. Scott Adams, who is senior vice president of technology and global products for Eaton’s Mobility Group, guided Truck & Bus Builder through the company’s portfolio, showing cutting-edge prototypes as well as its established range of power management technologies.

An example of the work which Eaton has done on hydrogen combustion is its ‘TVS supercharger’, which uses forced induction to push more air into the engine. Superchargers have been used in cars for over a hundred years, but Eaton encountered pressure issues when applying the same technology to hydrogen engines. With its specially designed supercharger, Eaton says it can help increase the pressure differential to achieve high performance and lambda levels equivalent to those in a diesel engine. The alternative to using a supercharger optimised for hydrogen would be to increase the size of the engine, an unattractive option for customers looking for ever more reductions in size and weight.