Hooking fuel hopes on hydrogen

By JANET MORAN
Times Columnist | Monday, May 21, 2007

Thank you Francois Isaac de Rivaz. The salutation is two hundred years late, but as we here in the Region pull up to gasoline pump sticker shock and hand over the kids' college education fund, here's to you. Your time has come.

Back in 1807 de Rivaz, a Swiss inventor, developed an engine fueled by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. He attached the engine to a cart-like apparatus and drove it at 3 mph with what was then the first vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine.

Commercially speaking, his design was not successful in the early 19th century marketplace. Steam, kerosene, coal, natural gas and finally gasoline were developed as fuels.

Now with gasoline prices reaching into the stratosphere, our energy consumption habits damaging the planet with our atmosphere perhaps beyond repair, and our economy beholden to shaky Middle Eastern geo-politics, hope is on the far horizon. Help, coupled with good old American ingenuity, may be on the way with hydrogen-powered engines. It can't come soon enough.

We're in the early stages of delivering that vision with the FreedomCAR, or Cooperative Automobile Research. It's a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy and USCAR composed of the Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler and General Motors.

BMW, also working on a hydrogen-fueled vehicle, unveiled its H2R race car at the 2005 Los Angeles auto show. With 286 horsepower, it propels from 0 to 60 mph in under six seconds. BMW reports that after attaining 187 mph at the Miramas racetrack in France, the car has set nine speed records.

As engineering leaves the drawing board to provide a transportation system powered by hydrogen, our infrastructure will have to be changed. Gas stations will give way to hydrogen-fueling stations. Florida has broken ground for one in Orlando. Researchers predict that in the next 10 years a hydrogen home refueling system could be installed in garages, allowing consumers to make their own fuel.

Sounds a bit too futuristic? For we who are engineered challenged, the Ford Motor Co.'s Web site provides a little insight into the rudimentaries of hydrogen-fueled vehicles. A fuel cell is used instead of a battery. The fuel cell catalyst performs, with no moving parts, a chemical process that combines oxygen from the air with hydrogen to produce electricity. Hydrogen gas is stored on the vehicle in a tank at less pressure than gasoline is in a fuel-injected engine.

Fuel cell vehicles are heralded as twice as efficient as gasoline vehicles while producing zero emissions. Water comes out of the tail pipe.

With emission efficiency, hopefully the proficient use of materials will follow close behind and vehicles will be downsized. We truly don't need a behemoth SUV to haul us back and forth to the grocery store. While most of the cars on the road today hold only the driver, perhaps a two-seater with an ample storage compartment and 75 miles per gallon will become the norm.

- The opinions are solely those of the writer. Contact her at janetcopywrite@sbcglobal.net.