Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good day, everyone. Welcome to Lubrication Experts. And today we've got a really cool topic to talk about because we're going to be talking about hydrogen and hydrogen engines and hydrogen combustion and all that kind of stuff, which is fantastic because I think there's a lot of interest from a lot of people.
Especially, you know, there's a discussion of batteries, hybrids, you know, methanol, all this kind of stuff. What does the future look like? So it's always fun to talk about, you know, a topic which kind of gets into the future of combustion engines.
And I have two people here I'm going to let you guys can introduce yourselves, but from Afton Chemical, who are going to talk all about hydrogen and who have kind of like dedicated the last few years of their careers to actually understanding hydrogen combustion and the lubricants that go along with hydrogen. So if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself, Tara.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Sure. I'm Tara Loosemore. I've been working at Afton for three years now, working in the heavy duty R and D team. So I'm working on formulation for new project products, being diesel and hydrogen applications.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome.
[00:01:02] Speaker C: So I'm Alan Henderson. I'm the regional marketing manager for engine oils and fuels for Afton, covering the EMEA region.
I've been with Afton for 12 years.
I do actually have a chemistry background, believe it or not. So it's quite frightening to. Whenever anyone asks me a chemistry question, they surprise.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome. So maybe just to kind of set up the discussion, first of all, first of all, like, why?
Why are we having this discussion in the first place? Like, why? Why hydrogen combustion, of all things, you know, as a future fuel?
Why are we looking to hydrogen rather than anything else?
[00:01:39] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a great question. And what. We have to credit someone else with this idea, but there was the North American Council for Freight Efficiency came up with this term of the messy middle. And what they were talking about is right now you look at where we are, predominantly it's a diesel environment, commercial vehicle.
When you look to the future, out to maybe 2050, there is the move to battery electric and we will see that electrification pathway.
The period in the middle is going to be a period where we see a huge amount of uncertainty.
You know, we need to think about range, we need to think about battery technology itself.
And in that middle period, there is legislation that's going to force truck manufacturers, you know, CO2 limits, particularly in Europe, where they're very stringent.
It's going to be difficult to meet that without doing something different from what they're doing today.
And we believe hydrogen's got a part to play in that. And certainly many of the major OEMs across the world should share that view and are investing heavily and exploring hydrogen.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: And then I guess hydrogen comes in two forms, right? So you've got hydrogen combustion versus you know, everyone like the cell kind of technology.
So this discussion I think is primarily hydrogen combustion. So what are, what are the advantages of doing that versus kind of like a fuel cell?
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Well, a fuel cell is more efficient than a combustion engine, but it has other drawbacks as well that maybe wouldn't want you to go towards combustion engine. So benefits of going combustion is that you can use an existing diesel engine and retrofit to work with hydrogen fuel.
It can use much more impure hydrogen. With fuel cell, there's very low tolerance for impurities in the hydrogen.
[00:03:30] Speaker C: There's also the cost of ownership.
So for hydrogen ice, the cost of ownership is very much dictating by the cost of the hydrogen itself. For a fuel cell, that'll be true as well. But you've also got the cost of the battery.
And so the payback period at the moment for a fuel cell is too long to make it worthwhile. I'm sure future may get there, but at the moment the economics don't stack up for hydrogen ice.
It is to extend to that cost of fuel. So actually is a short mid term solution makes a lot of sense.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: So I think combustion engines are sort of like a well known thing as well. I guess it comes with the advantages of if you transition a fleet from diesel to hydrogen, you know, all the same mechanics that worked on a standard reciprocating engine will also presumably be able to work on the hydrogen engine with a couple of light changes. Right.
So then what makes hydrogen unique? Right. From a combustion standpoint like so we, we combust all kinds of different fuels in reciprocating engines. Whether it's, you know, obviously petrol and diesel are the main ones, but you know, you start to get into the gases. Right. Natural gas combustion as well. So what makes hydrogen different to those kind of fuels? And then how does that then start to affect some of the decisions we make around the oil chemistry?
[00:04:56] Speaker B: So if you compare hydrogen combustion characteristics to our usual diesel, gasoline, maybe compressed natural gas as well, across the board it tends to be a step change difference.
So for example, the minimum emission energy for hydrogen is order of magnitude lower compared to something like gasoline or diesel.
And so that gives a lot more challenges around pre ignition. And so now we have to think about that more in both designing our engine and also designing our lubricant equally, we're no longer burning any carbon, we're only burning hydrogen. So we're getting a lot more water in our fuel, in our oil, in our whole engine. And so we have to deal with that. Protecting the surfaces, dealing with emulsion. What we don't want is water getting into the oil, separating out the bottom, and then getting picked up by the oil pump and pumped around the engine. And the water trying to act as a lubricant because it just will not provide sufficient lubrication and protection of your surfaces for that.
So we have to think about key ones would be thinking about the water, think about corrosion, thinking about emulsion, and then thinking about pre ignition.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And my understanding flame temperature and flame speed are different as well.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah. The flame temperature is, is hotter for hydrogen compared to other fuels.
Flame speeds faster and quenching distance is shorter. So that means we have to optimize our spark timing. But we also need to think about whole combustion chamber is going to be under more thermal stress. And how do we deal with that from a lubricant standpoint, we need to make sure that it's robust against oxidation. And so oxidation properties of the oil and also nitration as well is going to be really important for hydrogen engine.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess for anyone who's not aware. So like the way that I kind of describe it, oxidation, you're adding oxygen to the molecules, nitration, you're adding nitrogen to the molecules. Obviously nitration tends to be a little bit more rare because it's triple bonded to itself. So you need more energy to break it apart to get to stick to the molecules in the first place.
But with the higher flame temperature, then you've got more energy in the system to be able to break apart the nitrogen that's in the air as part of the combustion process, Right.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Yes. So we've got a hotter temperature, so more energy to cause these oxidations. And I think a good rule of thumb is for like every 10 degrees hotter that your oil experiences, your oxidation doubles.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I think maybe this is like a nice little sort of sidebar in terms of the chemistry. Everyone.
I always say that in our industry we're not very creative and when we want to tackle a problem, we just name the solution after the problem. So if you have a problem with oxidation that you use oxidation inhibitors. Right. To deal with the problem.
There's not really a specific class of additives which are used to deal with nitration or at least not, not a well known one. Right. So what do, what do we actually use in the oil chemistry to deal with nitration?
[00:07:59] Speaker B: So oxidation and nitration are very much linked in how they work. And so often you'd use your antioxidants, but they would also serve as anti nitration. Yeah, I've not used that term before.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Truly a multifunctional additive. Right.
Who knew? Okay, so, so predominantly we're having to deal with higher temperatures which would otherwise if we didn't compensate for it in the additive package, you end up with short oil burning intervals. How about like dealing with water? So presumably, okay, water you've already mentioned thermal strength issues that you can run into.
Presumably corrosion is going to become a bigger issue. So how are we, I mean you could just load up with corrosion inhibitors, but I suspect that that's not like the right word going about it.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Corrosion inhibitors is absolutely a good solution.
You need to be careful of which ones you're using as well. But what we tend to see with when we've worked with OEMs is the corrosion is not happening when the engine is running and the oil is circulating. And then you've got that oil film that's protecting the surface. Corrosion tends to happen when that engine is in storage and not on for a while. So the oil is not staying around.
And so therefore just the general humidity in the crankcase is then causing this attack on the surfaces. It causing some pretty rusty engines.
So we need some sort of corrosion inhibitor or surface active molecule that's not only going to protect the surface when there's oil flowing, but it's also going to stick to the surface and provide a long lasting kind of coating or film that's protectors from corrosion.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: And then how about like sort of philosophy on formulation. And when I say that in terms of dealing with water. So let's say for example the hydraulics world, probably the big split between mobile versus fixed plant is whether you want your oil to emulsify or demulsify. Right. And it's kind of like the how are you going to deal with the water? So how we kind of, how are we going about solving that problem?
[00:09:58] Speaker C: So for us at Aspton, we've, we've looked at this, done a number of tests over the last couple years and really a few of the best solution I think of course from handling the water, but also for the OEM in terms of simplifying the hardware is about emoxifying the water into the Formulation.
If you think the most, having the water separate at some stage, you're taking that out and having to find a system to do that.
Just adding complexity and a world where we're trying to strip out complexity. And actually for a lot of things, hygiene, RT can simplify the engine and the total vehicle setup. So I think it would be going in the wrong direction if they.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah, awesome, awesome. So then maybe if we could compare, let's say a sort of like a hydrogen ready engine oil versus like a diesel, a standard diesel engine oil that everyone's very familiar with.
You know, if I want to go from diesel to hydrogen, what does some of the changes that I'm making on the chemistry side and how am I going about that?
[00:11:08] Speaker B: So, yeah, the key points we've spoken about is water handling and pre ignition. So those are the kind of things you want to think about here. So a diesel designed oil would give you issues with corrosion and emulsion and possibly ignition, depending on how it's designed. And so that's what you're focusing on from moving one to the other. There are also elements where we have less requirement on the oil going from diesel to hydrogen, particularly around cleanliness, for example, because we're not burning any carbon in our fuel, so we have less chance for incomplete combustion and carbon deposits getting into oil and such.
So then you have the option to simplify your oil and skinny it down, move some of the dispersancy of the oil when you're moving to a hydrogen.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Yeah, so what I'm hearing is that ultimately we're looking for like a hydrogen dedicated kind of formulation, right?
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Yes, I'd say there are, you know, you can see there are flexibility arguments for going for a pure agnostic solution, but I think when you go dedicated to hydrogen, you get a focused solution that targets just the problems hydrogen need.
When you're designing for wider range of applications, you're always making compromises. And so if you target your application, then you're able to be more focused.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: Cool. And you guys have something that's commercially ready, right?
[00:12:29] Speaker C: Yeah, we're very excited. We've just launched our new dedicated hydrogen additive package for hydrogen combustion engines, which is the world's first actually, we believe to be commercially available.
It's been built on some of the fantastic work that Tara and the rest of the team have been doing the last couple of years and really wrestling with that idea of do we need something dedicated or is it few agnostic? And I think there's space for both, to be honest with you.
Some of EM will favor this idea that actually we want the flexibility to chop and change and others maybe more from our sort of technical superiority wanting to really lead in this field.
They want to lead with hardware, put the best engine all in as well. And the best engine all is going to be something that is designed bespoke for hydrogen rather than making compromises. So yes, it's been quite an exciting journey for us to go on and see what we can.
It's rare for us to in a world that driven by specifications. It's quite exciting. It's been a while where you can actually go out and try things and work with OEMs and other partners in the industry to see what's possible.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's interesting because here got a commercially available product but there are no specs.
Right. Because no specs exist. It's not like you've chosen to come out with a non stack oil. There are no specs out there. Is that something that's in active development as part of like let's say for example, people know the SC sequences.
Will there be potentially a separate scr? I don't know, maybe like sequence H. Right.
Not in the sense of the engine test, but you know, you put your A, B, C and E types if they're going to be like an H.
Is that a discussion that's being had or within the industry?
[00:14:15] Speaker C: I think I'm sure there are discussions around specifications happening and it has to be at some point you have to get to a point where you've got a minimum standard. That's what a CEO was brought in for as a minimum standard. So we do need to see that.
But I think at this stage so much of it is in the way our hands and it makes sense to be for OEMs to be trying this because a lot of what we've been working on in the last couple of years, we've seen this application variability hardware.
You can engineer out some of these problems as well.
So it will make it challenging to design a spec when actually there's so much difference at the moment. You probably need to get to a point where there's a bit more complex clarity on the future.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Let's say when you say engineering out some of the problems like some of that's going to be pushed onto the OEM as well. Right. So let's say for example the things that come to mind is if you're going to run into issues with corrosion, then there's plenty of substitutes that we can do on a material side for you know, Corrosion resistant materials.
Is there anything else that they can or should be looking at, let's say, for example, to solve the pre ignition issue?
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that's something that you can solve with your engineering. If you adjust your compression ratios, you can reduce your proclivity for pre ignition. And some OEMs have taken that strategy. Some OEMs are prioritizing other things and so therefore they still have the pre ignition issue and so they're looking for the oil to kind of solve that.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah, And I guess that's always the issue with lubricant formulations. You're trying to.
It sounds wrong to say you're appealing to the lowest common denominator.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: But you're having to formulate for everyone's technology stack, I guess.
Yeah. Okay, really interesting.
And just in terms of like the future, what do you say is like the next evolution with I guess both hydrogen engines but also the lubricant formulations.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: So I think there's still. OEMs are understanding exactly what strategy they're going to take with how they're going to put their engines together, what they're going to engineer out, what they want from the oil. So over the next few years, we expect to see a lot more development on that side. And then we work closely with the OEMs to try and best solve the problems they need us to solve.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Awesome.
Anything else?
[00:16:32] Speaker C: I think it's back to that thing around moving to some form of specification somewhere and an agreement, and it may not be even a specification, but at least agreeing on the right tests, some of these things and all have our views on which tests are the best. And actually as an industry coming together across OEMs, oil companies to agree what is the right approach.
I don't always think you necessarily need a spec, you know, deal with fuels as well where we've got testing, but there isn't generally specifications. You know, every customer is doing things differently in our world, so we shouldn't be afraid of that. But you do need to kind of have some commonality to the testing. So I think that's really the next step of we've all got kind of solutions coming through and we're excited about them.
How do we start comparing them on a kind of level playing field?
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thanks so much to the two of you for coming to chat. All things hydrogen.
I think hydrogen is one of those things that we've been hearing about for like a decade and it feels like it's always been in the future. So it's really cool to hear about things that are actually happening, like now and obviously products which are now commercial and can actually go into real engines. So, yeah, very excited to see what the future brings.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Thanks very much.
