Liquid nitrogen engine

A liquid nitrogen engine is powered by liquid nitrogen, which is stored in a tank. Traditional nitrogen engine designs work by heating the liquid nitrogen in a heat exchanger, extracting heat from the ambient air and using the resulting pressurized gas to operate a piston or rotary motor. Vehicles propelled by liquid nitrogen have been demonstrated, but are not used commercially. One such vehicle, Liquid Air, was demonstrated in 1902.

Liquid nitrogen propulsion may also be incorporated in hybrid systems, e.g., battery electric propulsion and fuel tanks to recharge the batteries. This kind of system is called a hybrid liquid nitrogen-electric propulsion. Additionally, regenerative braking can also be used in conjunction with this system.

One advantage of the liquid nitrogen vehicle is that the exhaust gas is simply nitrogen, a component of air, and thus it produces no localized air pollution in the tailpipe emissions. This does not make it completely pollution free, since energy had been required to liquify the nitrogen in the first place, but that liquification process can be remote from the vehicle operation, and could in principle be powered by a renewable energy or clean energy source.