Riassunto analitico
Global warming, pollution and environmental crisis are critical and dangerous phenomena for our planets and worldwide researchers are studying to develop new solutions to solve problems of this sort. While the scientific community is pushing for new solutions, governments are imposing new regulations to control and monitor the sustainability of industries. Focusing on the automotive industry, this trends brings to the introduction of more and more stringent limits on pollutant emissions.
This effort is pushing for the development of new technologies and to the optimisation of currently present one, in order to comply to environmental targets. In almost every country in the world, the mainstream for future mobility is seen in electric cars but this may be just one of possible solutions. Studies on alternative powertrains are carried out by several automotive companies and among these solutions, hydrogen can be proposed and studied.
Hydrogen powertrain can be distinguished into fuel cells and internal combustion engines. This latter has the advantage of being based on a well-known and mature technology. For this reason, this second alternative is studied into detail, in order to analyse its capability of complying with worldwide emission regulations and evaluate if this solution is able to match performance requirements of an high performance car target. For this scope, comparison between this technology and current Ferrari models is performed.
To address this complex topic, the thesis is divided into three main sections: the first discuss worldwide political trends and how they are translated into technical requirements. The second part of the thesis is focused on hydrogen powertrains, evaluating the reasons for the interest in this technology, the discussion of possible targets of applications and, focusing on high-performance car employment, the capability of internal combustion engines running on hydrogen to comply with pollutant emission requirements. Finally, other factors are discussed to evaluate this solution from a practical point of view and as a function of external factors like the availability of infrastructures, the market readiness and interest toward this solution of markets.
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