Trucking is among the most important, yet polluting parts of our environment. Everything everywhere was delivered by a truck, unless you live on a farm. A necessary evil, if you will. Getting truckers on board with the green movement will play an integral part in the widespread acceptance of alternative fuel vehicles. To do that, you’ve got to hit them in the wallet.

Towards that end, last week Vision Industries, with the help of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, unveiled a short haul, hydrogen-powered truck dubbed the Tyrano.

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A fuel-cell-powered aircraft set a world record by staying aloft for a whopping 23 hours and 17 minutes on just a single load.

In fact, the unmanned aircraft broke the previous record by double. Of course, the plane was built by the Naval Research Laboratory and not by students from the University of Michigan. Still, those students kept their plane in air for over 10 hours–impressive!

Of course their plane was only $2,500. I am guessing the Navy-built one cost us a whole lot more.

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They don’t know how it works, but it does.

A team of researchers at Georgia Tech has developed a new high-tech ceramic material that could make solid oxide fuel cells less costly and less finicky, and much more durable and efficient. The material is called Barium-Zirconium-Cerium-Yttrium-Ytterbuim Oxide. [Ed note: Say that three times fast and you get a gold star.] I don’t know if it’s any less of a tongue twister, but it’s known as BZCYYb for short.

Solid oxide fuel cells are of interest because they can generate energy without the need for an expensive catalyst such as platinum, which is typically used in hydrogen fuel cells. While nanotechnology is enabling the development of hydrogen fuel cells that use less platinum, with BZCYYb the prospects look good for ditching the precious metal entirely in favor of more sustainable technology—if solid oxide systems can be developed in a commercially viable form, that is.

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In Taiwan, a new charger technology claims to be able to charge phones without even being plugged into an outlet. That’s because it taps into the power of hydrogen as a fuel source, and is expected to help put Taiwan in the list of purveyor of green technologies.

Scientists from Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute recently unveiled a charger powered by hydrogen. According to source, the device can fully charge a phone within a couple of hours, although the amount of hydrogen fuel used for that span of time wasn’t mentioned. Tsau Fanghei of the research team says they “hope the hydrogen-powered device can replace current mobile phone recharge systems in 2012.”

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An enterprising and organized group of undergraduate and graduate students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have fitted an old sail boat with a spiffy set of hydrogen fuel cells and plan to run the boat from Manhattan to upstate New York later this month in a “green power” tour of sorts.

I love it when college students do this kind of stuff. Seriously. If I could have stayed in college forever, I would have. Believe me, I tried.

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Just this morning, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water approved $190 million for the hydrogen and fuel cell program office which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This action, in effect, restores the program to current year funding levels. Earlier this year, the administration demonstrated its lack of support for the future of hydrogen by pulling programs for hydrogen and fuel cell development. In addition, another $54 million was approved for the SECA program. The full appropriations committee meets tomorrow. This funding is for 2010.

“Congress recognized and embraced the role hydrogen fuels cells and their fuels play in the portfolio of energy technologies for the 21st century,” said Bob Rose, Executive Director for the U.S. Fuel Cell Council. “We hope that the Secretary of Energy (Steven Chu) and his staff embrace this as a spirit of goodwill.”

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Hydrogen (H) fuel cell technology could perhaps become the cleanest form of energy, both in terms of generating the gas and in terms of combustion products (which are just heat and water). The biggest problem has been making the process of H generation clean, efficient, and cheap, as the current, main source of H gas is coal.

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Lots of college students complete a thesis or final project, but few can claim to have finished something as impressive as the hydrogen fuel cell motorcycle built by Swarthmore College seniors Alex Bell and Andres Pacheco. The enterprising duo built the motorcycle in an attempt to evaluate the viability of a hydrogen economy by studying real-world data— specifically, by testing the efficacy of hydrogen fuel cells, internal combustion, and battery propulsion.

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The researchers say the process allows for the production of hydrogen without producing unwanted carbon dioxide. Given its potential utility with human waste, the idea also may open pathways to household toilet technology: “toilet generators.”

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The vehicle builds on the same hydrogen technology being used in the FCX Clarity — Honda’s “production” hydrogen fuel cell vehicle currently being tested in limited release by a couple hundred hand-picked owners in the US, including celebrities like Jamie Lee Curtis.

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Would owning 1/1000th of a Community Co-op Hydrogen Station be worth $2,000.00 to you? Greg Blencoe, CEO of Hydrogen Discoveries, Inc. thinks it would be, and he’s come up with an ingenious idea that might help “fuel” the hydrogen station infrastructure.

After corresponding with Greg, this is his plan as he related to me,

“How to build the hydrogen fueling infrastructure without the oil companies or the federal government.”

“The truth is,” says Greg, “that the car companies are very frustrated that neither the oil companies nor the federal government has stepped up to build the hydrogen fueling infrastructure. In order to break this logjam, I am proposing the following idea that would eliminate the need to depend on the oil companies or the federal government to get the hydrogen fueling infrastructure built.”

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On September 15, 2008, I published an article here entitled “GM’s $1.5 Million Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicle Wont be Available For At Least 10 Years,” and the information for the article was taken directly from my own experience, as I had seen the Equinox Fuel Cell being promoted that same morning, near where I work in Washington D.C.

After looking at the vehicle I had a conversation with a representative near the information booth, and it was a result of that conversation that spawned the article.

Well, Pete Barkley, who has been working for General Motors for the past eight years in Advanced Propulsion, was kind enough to leave a comment on the article, clarifying a couple inconsistencies and offering us some more information and a test drive.

Never one to give up a good opportunity, I’ve been in contact with him and true to his word, he is giving me the opportunity to drive the Equinox myself, and has granted an interview and will allow me to photograph and publish any pictures I take.

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Last night, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) demonstrated the world’s first manned airplane that can fly exclusively with the use of a fuel cell. The fuel cell, which is based on polymer electrolyte membranes (PEM), generates power for the motor glider’s electric engine.

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There are lots of reason to want to live in Japan, but being able to lease the new Toyota Fuel-Cell Hybrid sometime this year is now high on my list. Later in 2008, Toyota will release their new FCHV-adv model, which reportedly has a maximum cruising range is 516 miles (compared with 205 miles for Toyota’s previous fuel cell vehicle). This improved model uses both the hydrogen-powered fuel cell and an electric motor, and has improved performance partially due to better braking efficiency.

Also, Toyota claims they’ve managed to outsmart one of the challenges of using a fuel-cell auto: low temperatures. The FCHV-adv model can start and run in temperatures as low as -22 degrees Farenheit.

Toyota spokeswoman Kayo Doi announced that pricing and other details weren’t available, and overseas plans are still undecided. But the sooner these cars hit the road — anywhere in the world — the better for the whole planet.

Check out our Cleantechnica post about this new Toyota model here.

It’s the first time a plane powered by a hydrogen cell has left the ground with a pilot at the controls. Boeing said there’s still a lot to do before hydrogen fuel cells will power commercial airliners. As the technology progresses, Boeing says traditional jet fuel will be phased out as renewable sources take its place.

Source

Several of the vehicles were available to be driven at the ChallengeX event. Of the vehicles that were there, I was most interested in driving the University of Waterloo's entry. Most of the teams (12 of the 17 competitors) were using a B20 biodiesel blend as their fuel and all but one of the others used some form of internal combustion with E85 ethanol or reformulated gasoline. But the University of Waterloo team took a different approach.

The Waterloo vehicle was powered by a hydrogen fuel cell (with onboard batteries for backup) and propelled by front and rear electric motors. When I sat down behind the wheel, my guide from the Waterloo team explained that some of the things in the vehicle that are different from the way we're used to driving a car. There were a number of different sounds, coming from the front and the rear, as various systems came online to start the fuel cell system in operation. Matt Stevens from the Waterloo team explained the whole sequence of operation to me this way:

• when you first crank the key, there's no actual sounds as the no engine rank is required (or possible!)
• when the key returns to on from the crank position, first is a relay clicking meaning the battery is connected and the vehicle is ready to drive. Meanwhile the fuel cells are starting up:
• begins with a quiet hiss as the stacks are filling up with up with hydrogen,
• next the recirculation pumps kick on, making a low hum and a very slight vibration,
• last is the air delivery blower kicking up to pump air into the stacks,
• and voila, 65kW of fuel cell stacks ready to deliver power. Process takes about 10 seconds, but the car is ready to drive on battery power as soon as the first click is heard and the car is put into drive.

Image Credit: University of WaterlooI'm not a test driver. And even if I was, this was just a trip around the block of GM's Renaissance Center headquarters, so it was just four right turns and a couple of stops. I wasn't doing any hard maneuvering or acceleration testing, or anything else rigorous like that. Those tests had been conducted during the preceeding week at GM's proving grounds. Still, I think it was a unique opportunity to have the chance to drive a fuel cell vehicle. I may not ever have one in my driveway, but I've had the chance to drive one.

While the sounds were different from what you are likely used to with an internal combustion engine, the vehicle drove no differently than any other vehicle. It responded to the accelerator in the same way as any other vehicle, and it had reasonable pickup (even with four people in the car) and performed very comfortably. If they'd left the radio in and played it during the drive, it might not have been noticable that there was any difference at all.

I'm still uncertain about the ready availability of hydrogen, and the infrastructure to distribute it. But it's quite a thrill to drive something like this, even if it never makes it into mass-scale production. Hydrogen fuel cell power does have its uses, even if we don't see it become a mainstream automotive fuel. And, though hydrogen may be difficult to deploy across North America or Europe, it may be easier to bring it to other parts of the world, where the current fuel infrastructure is much more limited, and there is less commitment to gasoline and related fuels. So, although it's farther out there than the other entries, the design and engineering in this project are worthwhile. And even if we don't have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in our driveways, we're likely to find some specialty applications using hydrogen as part of a comprehensive power scheme in the future. In any case, the engineering efforts of this team (and others) will be put to good use.