Hydrogen motor

[belovelife]

could teflon handle the temperatures involved with hydrogen combustion

 

say as the block

[CraigD]

could teflon handle the temperatures involved with hydrogen combustion

Yes.

 

However, no unusual materials are required to burn hydrogen in an ordinary engine. Hydrogen gas combustion engines have existed since 1807. Practically any petroleum fuel engine can be easily converted to burn hydrogen gas.

 

Many references to this are available online, such as the wikipedia article “hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicle”.

[belovelife]

yes, but a teflon block would make it much lighter

so it would be more fuel efficient

[CraigD]

This is a very weird claim. Can you back it up, belovedlife?

 

Teflon isn’t a very good material to build an internal combustion engine out of. It has a low tensile strength (about 48 MPa, vs. 500-800 for steel), and deforms easily (in block form, it’s wax-like). It’s also has low thermal conductivity, and a low melting point (327 C vs. around 1500 for steel), so unless deposited as a thin layer over a thermally conductive material, such as a metal, it would quickly overheat and melt.

 

It’s also not unusually light, (density 2200 kg/m^3 vs. 2700 for aluminum)

 

In short, building an engine mostly out of Teflon or other plastics, appears to be a very bad idea.