Cooper Machinery Services (Cooper), a portfolio company of Arcline Investment Management, has successfully tested a slow-speed integral engine running on a hydrogen (H2)-natural gas fuel blend. The groundbreaking test comes 5 months after the announcement of Cooper’s joint hydrogen research project with a major U.S. gas pipeline company to demonstrate the safe operating range of H2 blends in large-bore internal combustion engines. 

“Cooper’s hydrogen development initiative took another large step forward today. We ran an unmodified large-bore, slow-speed integral engine-compressor with an H2 blend of 5% by volume, and we achieved significant reductions in methane in the exhaust. This is the first such run using significant amounts of hydrogen in an engine of this design.” said Cooper CEO, John Sargent. “In May, we will be running up to 33% by volume in the same stock engine. Our customers have thousands of similar units running globally, so the potential reduction of methane is substantial.”

The Cooper test was conducted at their slow-speed integral engine test cell at corporate headquarters located in Houston, Texas. The test engine is a standard two-stroke AJAX® 2802 with 15″ piston bore, 16″ power stroke, and a speed range of 360-440 RPM. Cooper selected the AJAX engine due to the similarities of its combustion system to that of the large fleet of the other engine brands the company services (Clark, Cooper-Bessemer®, Ingersoll Rand, and Worthington).