Natural Gas and Hydrogen Mixture for Urban Private Mobility

Atmospheric pollution is one of the most pressing problems in urban areas; the introduction of new fuels is one of the routes followed to alleviate it. This work reports tailpipe emissions measured during an experimental campaign conducted using Portable Emission Measurement Systems (PEMS), on a light vehicle run on real urban paths with different fuels: gasoline, natural gas and 10%, 20% and 30% hydrogen/natural gas blends.The results show the emissions reduction as function of hydrogen/natural gas blend under real driving conditions, in comparison with the gasoline and natural gas emissions. The use of natural gas and hydrogen blends reduces CO2 and NOX emissions; from 25% to 50% for CO2 and from 15% to 60% for NOX. CO2 emissions decrease with higher hydrogen contents in the blend while NOX emissions exhibit a more complex pattern depending by the hydrogen content. Results showed that maximum NOX reduction was obtained using the hydrogen/natural gas blend with 20% of hydrogen. It is worth to stress that intrinsic variability conditions of real word tests (traffic situations, average speed, idling time, etc.) and the NOX emissions complex pattern with blend hydrogen amount, motivates further experimental activity in order to obtain statistic value results.