Q&A with CAGE Technologies
IS HYDROGEN PART OF THE FUTURE?
Who are you and what do you do?
CAGE Technologies was established in 2021 to commercialise sustainable power technologies and products developed by the OakTec team. CAGE — Clean Air Gas Engines — technologies are a range of world leading engine systems for industrial and agricultural machines that use sustainable and net zero emission fuels. CAGE engine products use any gas fuels including biogas and hydrogen.
So, you don’t make sustainable fuel, but you do make specialist engines that run on it. Correct?
Yes. Our specialist capabilities include the design and development of power system controllers; engine design and development; combustion strategies for efficiency and emissions; engine testing; calibration and emissions mitigation.
Are your engines more efficient than the diesel and petrol engines used in most cars?
BSFC [brake specific fuel consumption] is improved over both petrol and diesel, but not significantly. The benefits of our technology are focused around emissions for a given output and giving operators the ability to use lower cost fuels that also offer an inherent carbon saving.
Do you think there’s a market for using sustainable fuel in motor cars?
Potentially, but the development of that is contingent on a number of factors. Legislation will play a key role; manufacturers need certainty in order to plan and the current policy landscape is not providing that.
The big question for the future concerns hydrogen, which seems to be the answer for readily available green fuel that produces zero emissions. Do you think we’ll see all cars being run on it soon?
Hydrogen certainly provides a solution in some cases. Burning hydrogen in a combustion engine is, relatively speaking, simple. There are challenges, but it is achievable. The hurdles to widespread adoption of hydrogen relate more to its production, storage and transport than to actually burning it. We have been spoiled by the convenience and single source of energy that oil has provided and it may be that no one energy source can replace that. Our view is that in the longterm there will be a number of different solutions that meet the needs of specific users.