Hydrogen road tour drives into Red Square
On first glance, the cars parked in Red Square Tuesday, June 2, appeared ordinary. What drew the crowds, however, is what was under the cars’ hoods.
In collaboration with Western’s Vehicle Research Institute (VRI), the California Fuel Cell Partnership (CaFCP) made a stop at Western to showcase 12 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as part of their 2009 Hydrogen Road Tour.
According to the CaFCP Web site, the Hydrogen Road Tour is a nearly 1,700 mile West Coast tour to promote hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles, which is a cleaner alternative to gasoline. The tour spanned from Chula Vista, Calif., to Vancouver, B.C.
The hydrogen fuel cell vehicles feature various car manufacturers, including Volkswagen, Honda and Toyota, and were on display for onlookers to view and ask questions.
According to the CaFCP’s Hydrogen Road Tour pamphlet, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles run off of stored electricity from hydrogen and oxygen.
“I don’t think people really understand how important these cars are,” said Western senior and vehicle engineering technology major Axel Schmidt. “They represent some of the highest levels of technology in the engineering world.”
The stop was also a chance for Western’s VRI to showcase several of its project cars, which ran on a variety of alternative fuel sources besides hydrogen fuel cells.
Some of the VRI vehicles displayed included the Viking 20, a solar powered car, the Viking 46, a formula-style racer, and the Viking 29, the world’s first thermophotovoltaic-powered car.
VRI alumnus Ben Vos said the Viking 29 is basically a solar-powered car that does not rely on sunlight. Vos said a natural gas flame heats up a black ceramic tube in the car, which is filled with a material that emits infrared light energy. This infrared light is picked up by special solar cells that convert the light to electricity for the car’s battery, he said.
One of the VRI vehicles, the Viking 32, runs on methane, which is collected from cow waste. While this may seem unusual, VRI director Eric Leonhardt said this fuel source is a real possibility in Whatcom County.
“We could power probably 20 to 40 thousand cars in Whatcom County,” Leonhardt said. “And that’s including big trucks as well.”
Western senior and vehicle design major Ben Romeijn-Stout said methane is harvested from organic waste by pouring the waste into ananaerobic digester, which is a building that decomposes the matter over the period of about a month. The methane is then harvested off the top, he said.
“It turns [the waste] into excellent soil actually,” Romeijn-Stout said “It has a lot of nutrients in it.”
Vos said while engineers are in a unique position in Whatcom County to make biomethane from dairy waste, it is not limited strictly to this area.
“Biomethane also works from human waste, fish guts, chicken breading—anything organic that will rot can be put in the digester,” Vos said.
Vos said even urban areas without farms, like Seattle, could harvest biomethane from their sewage treatment plants.
Chris White, communications director for CaFCP, said biomethane is a promising technology, but it is still in the developmental stages. She and the California Fuel Cell Partnership are pushing for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
“California has more hydrogen fuel stations than any other region in the world,” White said. “We have 26 stations. Next to us is Germany, then Japan and then Canada.”
White said participating automakers are looking at early commercial models of fuel cell vehicles, such as the ones on display Tuesday in Red Square. They expect thousands of vehicles will begin to be sold between 2012 and 2014 and tens of thousands by around 2017.
Schmidt said while proponents of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles like to claim that the vehicles run clean, the actual process of extracting the hydrogen for use in the vehicles leaves a large carbon footprint.
“It’s a newer technology, so it still has its bugs to work out,” Schmidt said.
Regardless of which alternative fuel source is the “right” one, White, Vos and Leonhardt agree that diversification is key.
“We would be a very foolish country to put so many eggs in one basket again,” White said. “We have to have multiple fuels, and multiple sources of making those fuels.”
Besides the economic vulnerability of relying on one source of fuel, Schmidt said the United States’ dependence on fossil fuels is one of the leading causes of global climate change.
“Finding alternate sources of fuel is important because our supply of oil is finite,” Schmidt said. “I think people assume that this problem of running out of oil is something that our kids or grandkids will have to deal with, but if we continue to consume oil as we do now, it will be a serious problem in our lifetime.”
