BMW, ZF supplier aims to convert diesels into hydrogen fueled power plants.
Guido Dumarey is an outspoken Belgian engineer who in 1986 established Punch Team, a spouse and children-owned selection of companies and investments in Europe with yearly earnings of extra than 500 million euros.
Substantially of that earnings will come from Punch Group’s automotive arm, which materials powertrain areas and engineering companies.
Dumarey, who is CEO at Punch Team, specializes in obtaining what he phone calls “widows,” which are battling companies that the house owners are eager to offer at deep reductions to conserve employment. The widows are restructured and a lot of of them are offered, frequently as component of an first general public featuring.
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Two vital areas of Punch Team’s present portfolio are discarded Typical Motors models in Europe: a transmission plant in Strasbourg, France, and a propulsion engineering centre in Turin.
The Strasbourg plant, purchased in 2012 and renamed Punch Powerglide, gained 250 million euros in funding to increase its merchandise and manufacturing.
Currently the manufacturing unit materials 6- and 8-pace automated transmissions to BMW, ZF Friedrichshafen as effectively as Chinese, Russian and Indian automakers.
Punch Team claims that restructuring saved one,000 immediate and three,000 oblique employment in Strasbourg.
Immediately after 6 a long time of striving, Punch in 2020 certain GM to offer its Turin engineering elaborate, which experienced served as U.S. automaker’s world centre of competence for diesels due to the fact 2005.
Paying for the company, which was established by GM in 2005 immediately after it divided from Fiat Vehicle, gave Punch Team obtain to extra than 700 engineers and experts who operate at the Turin Polytechnic Citadel.
Dumarey designs to use all that understanding and practical experience to change diesels into CO2-no cost, hydrogen-gasoline powerplants. He spelled out how in an job interview with Automotive Information Europe Affiliate Publisher and Editor Luca Ciferri.
Punch designs to start off making hydrogen-fueled powerplant from diesel engines by 2024. What is the rationale?
It is comparatively straightforward: Europe and China are mandating zero emissions for any form of transportation. Battery-driven cars are a person solution, but not the only solution, notably for hefty vehicles and gentle industrial cars.
The most appropriate determine for all those cars is the obtainable payload. But to improve array you require extra batteries, which provides fat and decreases the payload. Consequently, we imagine that changing diesel engines to burn up hydrogen delivers a extremely successful way to offer you CO2-no cost mobility that is useful both of those technically and socially.
Why socially?
The automotive field, notably in Europe, has created significant investments in diesel technologies, ranging from the engines to the injection and handle programs and extra. All these investments – and most of the employment related to diesels – are at possibility of extinction if we will go to battery-electric power only.
What are the most significant technological worries in changing a diesel to burn up hydrogen?
Hydrogen burns 7 periods more rapidly than diesel, so you require to minimize the temperature in the combustion chamber. Drinking water injection is a confirmed technologies to do this, but a destructive facet influence is that this results in corrosion.
Lubrication is a different possible difficulty for an motor that tends to be extremely dry, so spray lubrication is the only resolution. The motor alone only demands slight modifications to the cylinder head. The injection and handle programs also require to be reworked to deal with hydrogen.
Is it extra hard to change a gasoline motor into a hydrogen-burning powertrain?
Not actually. The principal difficulty is longevity. Present day diesels are built to past for 350,000 km although gasoline engines built to past for about 250,000 km.
Punch Team designs to start off making hydrogen-fueled engines by 2024. What will be in the portfolio?
We are doing the job on CO2-no cost answers ranging in electric power from 80 kilowatt several hours to 400 kWh (109 to 544 hp). At the top rated of the array, we are at present tests an evolution of the GM Duramax six.six-liter V-eight. (This device was built by the Turin centre beneath GM.
Punch has the legal rights to offer the hydrogen-driven variant of the motor around the globe, although the diesel variation can be offered almost everywhere other than the U.S.)
Then we are doing the job on a 500 cc combustion chamber that can accommodate quite a few displacements, from  a three.-liter V-six to a two.-liter I-four. We also have the means to make a one.five-liter a few-cylinder, but it is not on our close to-time period designs.
Wanting at Punch Team’s historical past, are you by now focusing on any possible diesel motor factories to include?
I are not able to say something particular, but you can very easily envision there will shortly be a lot of “widow” diesel motor crops all over Europe.
Why do you assume a top rated down distribute of hydrogen-driven engines?
Primarily due to the fact of the limitation of the recharging infrastructure. By 2023-24, Europe need to start off to have in position a sizeable selection of hydrogen stations on big highways. (The EU Inexperienced Offer proposes there need to be hydrogen refueling stations each individual 150 km on Trans-European Transportation Community corridors by 2030.)
That will be more than enough for hefty vehicles. Light-weight industrial cars up to the dimensions of a Ford Transit will stick to.
And what about passenger vehicles?
Listed here the obstacle is extra on the package deal than on the technologies. A automobile demands a tank able of storing about four kg of hydrogen. Whilst the fat of the tank is a portion of a battery pack – about 50 kg compared to quite a few hundred kilograms for the batteries – the tank demands a place of roughly 100 liters.
This is a sizeable packaging obstacle if you want to dwelling the tank in the trunk of a sedan. It’s even extra problematic with hatchbacks. For passenger vehicles, we imagine the extra promising resolution is an electrified flywheel, which we get in touch with a Flybrid.
What is a Flybrid?
It is a mechanical flywheel that operates at speeds up to 42,000 rpm and provides kinetic power recuperated although braking again to the wheels. The kinetic power is employed to lower the motor load at start off and when accelerating. We have a 2nd software where by a generator is related to the flywheel to demand a smaller battery.
Listed here the saved power is presented again to the car or truck utilizing a motor inserted in the transmission, equivalent to what occurs with complete hybrids. We have been tests this resolution in some taxis in London, where by we have viewed gasoline usage personal savings of about 34 %. We have also examined the Flybrid on a Jaguar XF diesel, providing a 22 % reduction in gasoline usage.
You have experienced a extremely prosperous occupation in automotive, any regrets about offers that didn’t get carried out?
My unsuccessful try to invest in GM’s Holden plant in Adelaide, Australia. That plant generated cars on a extremely fantastic rear-wheel-push system, Omega. I moved into the powertrain sector due to the fact the most effective system for various purposes is rear-wheel push and I missing it.
But it is what it is. (GM and Punch finished negotiations for the plant in February 2016, with functions halting in Oct 2017. A whole of seven.six million vehicles had been created at the manufacturing unit more than 69 a long time).
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BMW, ZF supplier aims to convert diesels into hydrogen-fueled powerplants, January 16, 2022
