Cleaner fuel poised to take over as oil crises looming large
The Economic Times: March 27,2008
Taking into account the vast consumption of petroleum product and mounting gas bills, five domestic automobile majors — Bajaj Auto, Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) and Eicher Motors — have come together to develop hydrogen blended compressed natural gas (HCNG) run vehicles in India.
Under the clean fuel roadmap and to tackle the problem of rising pollution, the pilot project will use CNG with different blends of hydrogen fuel ranging from 12% to 30%. This will be tested on the different type of vehicles that will be supplied by these manufacturers. Bajaj Auto's three-wheeler has already been tested along with Tata Motors' light commercial vehicles (LCV), while bigger commercial vehicles and buses will soon be tested.
Hydrogen has been seen as the active bio fuel for automobile around the world and now Indian companies are participating actively to get some concrete results. The joint initiative of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy along (MNRE) with Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers' (SIAM), will see the first time use of Hydrogen as the auto fuel in India.
"We will study emission and performance of different vehicles running with different Hydrogen blends of up to 30% in the conventional internal combustion engines. The new fuel will be tested on all vehicles — from three-wheeler, cars to passenger buses.
The new blend will determine hydrogen as automotive fuel in India and leading to much cleaner environment," said SIAM's Director General Dilip Chenoy.
Behind the pilot project lies the vision to control the rising pollution in metros and cities, which is becoming the biggest health hazard in urban settlements.
From testing new vehicles running on HCNG, it will be extended to cover the existing CNG fleet in Mumbai, Delhi, Surat and Agra. Delhi has 52-lakh registered vehicles, the highest in the country of which around 10-lakh are fired by CNG alone.
"We will determine the right blend for optimum power and minimising emission levels. There will be half a dozen different engines in these tests raging from 250 cc to over 2,000 cc, which will help us to determine the precise blend of fuel for ultimate efficiency in the automobile industry," Mr Chenoy added.
The existing IOC facility at Faridabad in Haryana, which already has the infrastructure to develop Hydrogen as automotive fuel, will provide the fuel and its second Hydrogen unit is coming up in Delhi this year. And later all the existing 135-CNG stations in the capital will be made HCNG compliant.
The government's overall initiative for hydrogen fuel envisages an cumulative investment of Rs 24,000 crore, that will be invested in the production, storage and dispensation of hydrogen in the country. The roadmap envisages development of hydrogen as clean fuel in the long run and run more than 1,00,000 vehicles by 2010.
Other model of alternative fuel are also being developed. The utility vehicle major M&M will launch the hybrid Bolero or Scorpio sometime next year. These micro hybrid version of Bolero and Scorpio will use uses electric power while idling and for powering it during slow driving and these will be more economical to run.
