Hydrogen powertrains technologies for trains

DIMA coordinated a research group composed by 3 Universities focused on the development of hybrid solutions for regional trains that will be fed by electricity as well as fuel cells (FC)/batteries. In fact, in the next years the diesel trains will be progressively put out of service due to more and more binding emission limits. But the national and local administrations are however obliged to buy new trains equipped with the current technologies to guarantee reliable level of service and this will lead to extra-cost due to the reduced depreciation time. The solution employing H2 as energy storage was compared with another approach based on the adoption of batteries only as well as with the performance of the existing trains. The main research objectives were focused on developing zero-emission solutions that are also able to guarantee proper train autonomy (i.e., return trip) without intermediate refilling of hydrogen. Such a solution must also satisfy the request of limiting the additions of volumes and weight required by the adoption of a new technology. Furthermore, the existing regulations and the authorization process was also examined aiming at exploring possible obstacles or barriers. This analysis has to be considered as a precursor of a real-scale experiments, aiming at verifying the real possibility to successfully implement this type of retrofitting action. For such reason a LCA analysis was also carried out to evaluate the global impact of the proposed solutions