Toyota Developed A Liquid Hydrogen Combustion Engine!

Can Toyota save the combustion engine by using liquid hydrogen?

Toyota surprised me once again, announcing they've raced with liquid nitrogen in the Fuji 24 Hour race, accomplishing what they claim is the first for any manufacturer. No one has raced with liquid hydrogen! The technology is awesome, as it allows for a lot more hydrogen storage versus gaseous hydrogen (stored at 700 bar). Here, the low pressure liquid must be kept at -253ºC, however, which is quite a challenge.

According to Toyota, this project had three main challenges:
1. Keeping the liquid hydrogen at a very low temperature.
2. Maintaining the efficiency and capacity of the fuel pump.
3. Controlling the pumped liquid hydrogen, as it converts to gas.

We'll also discuss another issue that exist with hydrogen, which is how much space it takes up, despite having a better energy density by mass than gasoline. Unfortunately, the energy density by volume is quite a different story. Check out the video to see if this technology is worth the hype!

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[EngineeringExplained]

**NOTE** A couple interesting points not discussed in the video:
1). Toyota looked at other pump options (turbo pump w/ spinning blades, versus reciprocating piston). They chose the reciprocating option.
2). Why do you need a pump at all? Why not rely on the pressure generated from heated hydrogen as it changes from liquid to gas? Well, because the flow requirement is way too high. You're using a ~150 liter tank in the course of about 30 minutes. At 80% fill, that's over a gallon of liquid hydrogen per minute. You need a pump to flow that much liquid to the engine.
3). Why does it take so long to replace the pump? ~3.5 hours!? It is not at all a simple process. Toyota describes what must happen. Remember, the pump is inside the hydrogen tank, so the process is as follows: drain the remaining hydrogen from the tank, fill the tank with an inert gas (nitrogen, in this case), replace the pump, remove the nitrogen, fill with gaseous hydrogen, then fill with liquid hydrogen. The process is very time consuming (took 4 hours the first time, 3 hours the second time, during the race).

If you enjoyed this, I have numerous related videos on the subject to learn more!

[Rdebo_]

The fact that Yamaha's helping design this engine makes me so excited because every time they touch an engine that will go into a Toyota something legendary gets made.

[Cyrillcito]

I just propose for F1 cars to race around using liquid hydrogen by towing along a 700 liter tank on a trailer. That sure would make the race more interesting

[zwgrafakhsandrianos]

Massive respect to Toyota for saying "we haven't made much progress"...

[AshenRJ]

This whole experiment is a constant "one step forward two step back", and the frustration the engineers felt must be immense. I cannot help but give props for Toyota to _still_ pursue this dream, hell even _challenge_ the world with it, despite it's many, and constant, drawbacks.

[shirolee]

I gotta say, serious respect for Toyota doing something like this.

[goatsplitter]

Gotta hand it to Toyota for at least trying new things. Solving engineering problems as a test like this is important.

[BurlyNerdGetsTheWorm]

Sometimes I wonder if these R&D teams write extensive debriefs for leadership or whether they just wait for Jason to finish and just forward the YouTube link. 😂

[dannymartial]

So much respect for Toyota for investing crazy R&D money into projects like these.

[ezpoppy]

“It’s when you push the boundaries that you learn… and that learning often involves failure.”

Yes! Exactly!

I have found that both scientists and artists spend an incredible amount of time and energy creating failures. That is the nature of creative processes.

It’s easy to do what is already known. It’s incredibly difficult to create something new.

Scientists and artists know this, and are not discouraged by failure. Most of us, sadly, get frustrated by our failures. Yet, this is where real learning happens!

No one ever asks “Why did that work?” when they succeed. There’s lots of cheering, high fives, and fist bumps. Hooray!

But when something doesn’t work, that’s when artists and scientists dig in. “Why didn’t it work? What can I try next?”

Very cool video, Jason!

[davidvenegasramirez]

Jason is still more intelligent than a lot of engineers that I've met, even if he hasn't worked exclusively in the engineering field in a few years. Kudos man, you were the reason I began studying mechanical engineering ❤

[wiegraf]

I really appreciate your fair evaluation of this technology and the effort to push the engineering, while at the same time showing the math that cuts the hype down to size. There are SO MANY people in car YouTube who are taken in by Toyota's marketing and we need this kind of stuff to keep manufacturers honest and avoid wishful thinking.

[TML]

So, hydrogen fuel goes in, disappointment comes out. It’s the CVT of fuels.

[Wofinet]

Mate - I don’t comment on a lot of YT videos. But seriously what a video. So dense with complex info eloquently put. Knocking it out of the park.

[pontinha]

The "American translation" (7:47) from kg to rocks makes this video much more accessible and informative!

[bcsa]

Good stuff, Jason! On this topic, it is also interesting to mention AVL's H² race engine with the water injection.

[XenonG]

Me who is into aerospace: *Starts laughing at Toyota*
Might as well use metallic hydrogen.

[scottanthony]

Decades ago, fellow engineers liked to say, "Hydrogen. Fuel of the future. Always has been, always will be." Still true today. And you didn't even get into how the hydrogen is produced and liquified, nor any infrastructure where people could fill up. If you think the EV charging station situation is challenging, try building a hydrogen supply and distribution chain.

[ChrisLarsson]

About synthetic fuels, I would love a video about them including HVO which is widely used in Sweden 👍🏻

[moosenugget]

Kudos to Toyota for trying different things, going so far as to enter both their liquid hydrogen project and the other carbon-neutral fuel project into the same race. I'm very interested to see what kind of solutions automakers will come up with to keep driving fun in the face of climate change and the inevitable shift away from ordinary gasoline.

Also, I'd love to see an updated video on CNF, to see if some of the issues you pointed out 2 years ago have been overcome.