Hydro-methane

This indicates a blend of hydrogen and methane, and it is the core element of the project MhyBus. The use of this blend, with a relatively small percentage of hydrogen mixed to compressed natural gas has been proved to:

  • Increase the efficiency of internal combustion;una migliore efficienza della combustione interna;
  • Reduce CO2 emissions due to the lower C content;
  • Decrease fuel consumption;
  • Reduce CO2 emissions in urban environment without the large investments needed to convert the whole fleet to a purely hydrogen-fuelled one.

A study by MHYBUS partner ENEA (2006) has shown the following:

  • hydro-methane allows to cut down the air emissions up to five times, given the same traffic intensity (leverage effect)
  • a small share of hydrogen (10-15%) does not require modification to the working regime of the thrusters and of the parameter of the electronic control unit 
  • the engine efficiency increase due to the optimization of the combustion allows, already from small percentage of efficiency gain, to balance the energy spent for the Hydrogen production (from steam reforming) 

Other hydromethane related projects:

  1. Hythane® bus in Montreal
  2. SunLine (California, USA) Hythane® station in SunLine (California)
  3. Powertech (Canada) - Powertech station in Surrey, BC (Canada)
  4. Hythane – blending hydrogen with CNG for city buses in Malmö (Sweden)
  5. REGINS – BONG-HY (parallel application of Blends Of Natural Gas and HYdrogen in internal combustion engines and fuel cells), city of Brescia, Italy
  6. Hydromethane at La Sapienza, La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
  7. Experimental Research Laboratory of Hydrogen as Fuel or Fuel Additive, Ecological Fuel Additives and Fuel Systems in Lithuania