This project seems to make sense. Government and private industry pooling available resources to reach a difficult, but achievable, goal. Kind of like a fantasy. I'm all for it.
Savannah River National Laboratory has been chosen to lead a consortium of universities and corporations in efforts to develop hydrogen vehicles that will reduce dependence on gasoline.
The new Hydrogen Storage Engineering Center of Excellence, to be based at the Aiken County lab, is not a physical building, but rather a "virtual center" with 10 partners around the country that will collaborate to advance hydrogen research.
"The Department of Energy's goal with this is for hydrogen vehicles to essentially do what today's gas vehicles will do," lab spokeswoman Angeline French said.
The department's Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies Program, an arm of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, sought applications earlier this year to fund a multidisciplinary Center of Excellence team. The Savannah River lab's selection was announced Thursday.
The center, expected to operate for five years, will develop onboard hydrogen storage systems that can allow cars to drive 300 miles or more. The center also will develop scale model prototype vehicles for testing. The Energy Department expects to provide as much as $6 million in fiscal year 2009 for these projects.
The director of the center will be the lab's Dr. Don L. Anton, who led development of a prototype sodium aluminum hydride-based hydrogen storage system. The lab's Dr. Ted Motyka, who has designed and developed metal hydride hydrogen storage systems for more than 25 years, will be the assistant director.
Dr. Sam Bhattacharyya, the lab's director, said the choice of the lab to lead the program was a good one.
"Over a decade ago, we led a team that put a hydrogen-powered bus on the streets," he said. "And for decades before that, we have built up core competencies in this area by developing practical tritium storage systems that support the nation's defense."
The combined knowledge of the lab's scientists and experts from the nine other partner groups, he predicted, will lead to reasonably priced hydrogen-fueled cars that will reduce or eliminate the need for gasoline.
Reach Rob Pavey at (706) 868-1222, ext. 119, or rob.pavey@augustachronicle.com.
HYDROGEN-FUELED CAR RESEARCH
The Hydrogen Storage Engineering Center of Excellence team:
- Savannah River National Laboratory (Aiken)
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, Wash.)
- United Technologies Research Center (East Hartford, Conn.)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, N.M.)
- NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, Calif.)
- The Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Golden, Colo.)
- General Motors Corp. (Warren, Mich.)
- Ford Motor Co. (Dearborn, Mich.)
- Oregon State University (Corvallis, Ore.)
- Lincoln Composites Inc. (Lincoln, Neb.)
KEY RESEARCH OBJECTIVES:
- Reducing the cost of hydrogen, which includes production and delivery, from multiple pathways including renewable energy sources.
- Reducing the cost of fuel cells and improving their durability.
- Improving onboard hydrogen storage technology to enable a 300-mile drive without compromising passenger and trunk space, performance or cost.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy's Hydrogen Program
Comments
This project seems to make sense. Government and private industry pooling available resources to reach a difficult, but achievable, goal. Kind of like a fantasy. I'm all for it.
A total waste. We need nuclear, wind and solar power to produce enough electricty to run cars off of it. This is the clean solution while hydrogen burning continues to release gases into the atmosphere. Unwise that the SRS wouldn't be concentrating on designing safer and cheaper nuclear power plants. We need hundreds more of them right now because it is not pie in the sky research. They work and electricity is better than burning hydrogen. More than a few reactors to produce electricity could even be located right on the SRS campus.
We need a small nuclear plant to run cars -- if an aircraft carrier can roam the seas for 20 years with out refueling --- just thinking how long you could drive a car. (Just kidding) I realize the public and the government would never go for something like this because of the dangers. But it would be nice to buy a car you never had to put gas in.
The whole world needs to go back to Science class. You CAN NOT make energy with out spending MORE energy. Hydrogen does NOT exist alone in this universe, so therefore it must be cracked out of the molecules where it does exist. But to do that requires one to USE energy, and MORE than you get out.
Besides that Rob, will you also explain that a tanker truck of hydrogen would have to follow every six cars to get them the same distance that a tank of gas would get them.
This is the future of transportation. Solar, wind, nuclear and natural gas can all make electricity but storage and transmission of electricity can be tricky. If we instead store the energy in a metal hydride it would be available as needed. The weight as well as the ecological impact of an electric car compares unfavorably to a hydrogen powered car. In 1978, when oil was scarce, my brother (while at Georgia Tech) got a Dodge Omni to run on hydrogen with a very green footprint and little change in vehicle weight. If our transportation can be decoupled from the energy source we can have clean cheap transportation.
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