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Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine (H2ICE) powered vehicles have been considered a low emission, low cost, practical method to help establish a hydrogen fueling infrastructure. However, the naturally aspirated H2ICE operating lean has performance issues requiring either increased displacement or induction boost to have comparable power to the modern gasoline powered IC engine. Ford Scientific Research Laboratory has continued its H2ICE system investigation, conducting dynamometer engine-boosting experiments utilizing a 2.0 L Zetec engine (with compression ratios of 14.5:1 and 12.5:1), and a 2.3L Duratec HE-4 engine (with a compression ratio of 12.2:1) with boosted manifold air pressure up to 200 kPa. Test data of brake torque and exhaust emissions are reported at various boost pressures. Results of a detailed NOx study, conducted at University of California - Riverside, with EGR and aftertreatment for a naturally aspirated 2.0L Zetec engine are also reported.

The AFR control accuracy in the cold start is crucial to lowering emissions from IC-engine vehicles. An artificial UEGO “sensor” for estimating the real-time AFR during the engine cold start has been developed on the basis of a fuel-perturbation algorithm at Ford Scientific Research Labs. The AFR values calculated by the artificial UEGO sensor have been used in the closed-loop fuel control. Considering that the engine cold start AFR is an uncertain, non-linear problem, some other techniques for optimizing the input stimulation signal and the output-filtering model are integrated together with the fuel perturbation. This artificial sensor was realized and its performance was tested on a Ford vehicle for EPA75 cold 505 test. The assessment of the artificial sensor was quite different in comparison with that of a real UEGO sensor.