The team, led by Professor Shawn Kook from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, spent around 18 months developing the hydrogen-diesel direct injection dual-fuel system that means existing diesel engines can run using 90% hydrogen as fuel."This new technology significantly reduces CO2 emissions from existing diesel engines, so it could play a big part in making our carbon footprint much smaller, especially in Australia with all our mining, agriculture and other heavy industries where diesel engines are widely used," says Prof. Kook.The collaborative research, performed with Dr. Shaun Chan and Professor Evatt Hawkes, found that specifically timed hydrogen direct injection controls the mixture condition inside the cylinder of the engine, which resolves harmful nitrogen oxide emissions that have been a major hurdle for commercialisation of hydrogen engines."But we have shown in our system if you make it stratified—that is in some areas there is more hydrogen and in others there is less hydrogen—then we can reduce the NOx emissions below that of a purely diesel engine.""In terms of applications where the hydrogen fuel would need to be stored and moved around, for example in a truck engine that currently runs purely on diesel, then we would also need to implement a hydrogen storage system to be integrated into our injection system."