Just like in cars or trucks, diesel engines in locomotives pollute the climate by burning fossil fuels. The "H2-ICE-LOC" project is about decarbonizing a hybrid shunting locomotive with a hydrogen direct combustion engine to enable emission-free shunting operations in rail freight transport in the future.
Emissions from rail operations can be reduced through electrification. The locomotives are supplied directly with electrical energy via the overhead line or conductor rail. However, shunting movements by shunting locomotives to assemble trains from individual wagons today often take place in extensive, non-electrified networks. At the current rate of construction, it will take decades to electrify the entire network. At the same time, there are around 4,000 diesel-powered shunting locomotives in Germany. With an average life expectancy of 50 to 70 years, it will take a long time to replace all locomotives with new locomotives with alternative drives. If existing locomotives can be converted from diesel to hydrogen fuel, it will be possible to reduce CO2 emissions to almost zero in an instant.
The aim of this project is to develop a solution for converting an existing locomotive to hydrogen combustion in order to enable emission-free shunting operations in rail freight transport in the future. The locomotive's diesel engine will first be set up on the test bench and prepared for hydrogen operation. Tests in single-cylinder operation will initially confirm the feasibility of the exclusive combustion of hydrogen in large engines in order to transfer this to the full engine and test it.
As part of this project, IVB is working on the simulative description of the combustion process and the charging system and, based on the test bench results, is creating corresponding engine process simulations. Numerical simulations will be used to develop an optimal charging concept in the form of an exhaust gas turbocharger for the high lean-burning capacity of hydrogen when converting from diesel to hydrogen.