The new company based in Israel, Aquarius Engines, is working on a hydrogen light engine concept, which was developed in 2014. The Aquarius Two Sided Free Piston Linear Engine runs on hydrogen and generates electricity for plug-in hybrids.
A small engine consists of 20 components, of which only one is powered. Although it was originally supposed to run on gasoline, the engine has the ability to run on the same type of fuel as, for example, the latest carbon-neutral, synthetic liquid fuel. Now the company has developed and tested a hydrogen-powered unit.
The Aquarius engine is linear because unlike the conventional pistons mounted on the axle in the engine, there is only one piston with two combustion chambers at the ends. The piston inside the two-stroke engine moves horizontally. It has only one piston knob, a small block of cylinder in which the piston slides, has two cylinder heads, two inner and two outer bearings. The air-cooled engine does not need lubrication. Instead it has a graphite piston ring and a special layer that reduces wear. Lack of oil does not cause leakage or burning.
The unit has four injectors, two at the top of each cylinder. In each clock cycle, a pair of injectors spray hydrogen into the fresh air, the mixture is ignited by a spark plug, and this sequence starts all over again.
The engine turns on a generator that feeds the batteries. In addition, a regenerative braking system works.
Information on production dates has not yet been made public, although tests of this unit were conducted by AVLSchrick in Austria. Now the work is going on to reduce the noise.
The Aquarius engine was fitted with a chassis to demonstrate its potential. The demonstration machine included a hybrid system running on fuel, but it can similarly move to a hydrogen-powered version.
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