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4/30/2002   Ballard Blames Purchase of Xcellsis and Ecostar for Mounting Losses by Peter Fitzpatrick - Financial Post (Canada)

The company lost US$50.7-million or US48¢ per share in the quarter, versus a loss of US$14.1-million (US16¢) a year earlier. Revenue was US$14.4-million, up from $12.6-million.

4/29/2002   Hydrogen Fuels Future's Cars by Robert C. Stempel - USA Today

Neither the energy bill approved by the Senate late last week nor the sharply different House version approved earlier would do enough to begin ending our dangerous dependency on Middle East oil. Our major energy focus today ought to be on transforming our system to one based on the most abundant and non-polluting element on earth: hydrogen. ...Critics contend that using hydrogen energy to power autos is decades away. They are simply wrong. The transformation to hydrogen power is underway.
...Robert C. Stempel, former chairman of General Motors Corp., heads Energy Conversion Devices, which is developing and manufacturing fuel cells, solid hydrogen storage, nickel-metal-hydride batteries and photovoltaics.

4/29/2002   Building Green Cars May be Easier Than Keeping Them Gassed Up by Kenneth Terrell - US News

The sticking point is the hydrogen: making it and swapping every pipeline, tanker truck, and gas station in the country for the infrastructure needed to distribute it. The changeover, Shell Hydrogen estimates, would cost at least $19 billion. "Everything boils down to who pays for it to start," says Dan Holt of the Society of Automotive Engineers, an organizer of a fuel-cell technology summit held in Dearborn, Mich., earlier this month. "You can't have [hydrogen] stations until you have cars, but you can't have cars until you have hydrogen stations. It's the old chicken-and-egg problem." One key to breaking the impasse, some experts say, is to think locally, finding cheap ways to supply a few stations with hydrogen before making a national investment.

4/29/2002   Taking a Lighter Approach to Solar Power - AP

Unlike conventional solar panels that use heavy, stiff glass, the photovoltaic sheets are thin, light and pliable. They can be used to replace normal roof shingles and generate electric power from the sun. "You're looking at the present and the future," says Stan Ovshinsky, chief executive officer of Energy Conversion Devices Inc. "Hydrogen has been called the ultimate fuel, and the sun is the ultimate source of energy. If you tap into that, and you should, it changes the world beyond anything anybody could expect," he said. Photovoltaics is not new, but Ovshinsky's device for mass producing the sheets is. The challenge, he says, has always been to invent a process for producing large quantities of the material at a reasonable cost without compromising quality. What made it possible was Ovshinsky's invention of a "multi-junction" that allows the machinery to join six rolls of the material to create one roll, nine miles long and 16 inches wide, without any loss of generation capability at the seams. During the course of a year, Ovshinsky plans to produce 1,000 miles of the material that he said can provide a total of 30 megawatts of electric power.

4/29/2002   New Membranes Could Help Produce Hydrogen for Fuel Cells - EarthVision

Argonne's Energy Technology Division has developed a ceramic membrane that can extract hydrogen from methane, which the chief component of natural gas. "Ceramic membranes make possible the widespread use of hydrogen," says Argonne's Balu Balachandran, who led the research effort. "Just as conventional cars need gas stations, fuel cells will need an infrastructure to support them. Ceramic membranes could eliminate the need for costly refineries - they are small enough and efficient enough to have one at every gas station."

4/29/2002   Sewage Turned into Hydrogen Fuel by Will Knight - New Scientist (UK)

The new process begins with turning waste "biomass" into hydrogen, methane, water, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, using standard gasification techniques that involve heat and pressure. But further hydrogen is then produced by also breaking down the methane and water... with the aid of a nanocrystalline catalyst. The process can be run continuously because pure hydrogen is extracted through a palladium-coated ceramic semi-permeable membrane that blocks other gases. If the hydrogen was not removed the reaction would reach equilibrium and stop. ...The team expects to have constructed the first prototype, with the capacity to generate as much fuel as a petrol "gas" station, by 2005.

4/27/2002   Earth's Surprising Hydrogen Reserves: An Exclusive Interview with NASA Ames Scientist Dr. Friedemann Freund by Bill Moore - EV World

Unlike petroleum and natural gas deposits that are sporadically scattered about the planet, Freund believes hydrogen-laden rock deposits are more evenly distributed. "I think, even though I would like to do much more work in order to broaden our knowledge base, that almost all continental rocks are loaded with hydrogen," he stated. "But I would not call it a 'deposit' because the hydrogen is very dilute." Bottom line? Don't expect any petroleum-like "gushers." This is because most of this hydrogen is trapped in the crystalline structure of the rock. However, Freund speculated that "this does not rule out the possibility over millions of years that hydrogen could have percolated into some traps similar to natural gas and then be available as a gas field."

4/23/2002   Reverse-Selective Membranes Hold Hydrogen Possibilities by Michael Pastore - Nanotech Planet

To construct membranes through which large molecules permeate faster than small molecules do, researchers used nanoparticles about 10 billionths of a meter in diameter to modify the molecular structure of plastic membranes. ...The most immediate promise lies in developing a cheaper way to purify hydrogen. ...According to Merkel, the existing processes to purify hydrogen are expensive and complicated. But his team's discovery would be less expensive and simpler, and could potentially allow the recovery of hydrogen from the hydrogen steams that refineries now burn as waste. Inexpensive hydrogen, and a cost-effective way to remove pollutants, also opens the door for the manufacture of motor fuels using coal, rather than crude oil, as a starting point.

4/22/2002   True Energy Independence by Ken Whiton - Ablequerque Journal/Republicans for Environmental Protection

Nothing will change the fact that America has 3% of the world’s oil reserves and consumes 25% of the world’s current oil production. As long as we are dependent on oil, we will be dependent on foreign oil. Norton and Hoffa admit that in the future we will still need to import around 60% of our oil. The administration’s “Drill America First” policy is shortsighted and unpatriotic. It is also a “toxic cloud” that keeps us from clear thinking leading to real solutions. The answer for the future lies in increased fuel efficiency, solar and wind energy and alternative fuels.

4/22/2002   Aggressive Expansion Planned for Linde by Tim Burt and Peter Marsh - Financial Times (UK)

Wolfgang Reitzle, the outgoing head of Ford's Premier Automotive Group, has vowed to embark on an aggressive expansion of Linde, the German engineering group which last week named him as its prospective chief executive. ...It is understood that the former Ford executive hopes to develop Linde's fledgling fuel systems business, particularly in the area of alternative fuels and zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells for the automotive industry. The company already co-operates on developing fuel cells with BMW of Germany, where Mr Reitzle was head of production before joining Ford in 1999.

4/22/2002   NASA Develops New Portable Fuel Cell Technology - Space Daily

The power source uses the new lightweight monopolar flat pack technology and is roughly the size of two paperback books standing tall, back-to-back. It operates efficiently at ambient temperature without a fan, unlike conventional designs. JPL engineers rigged a cell phone to this power unit and placed several phone calls as a demonstration. They estimate that the 5-watts could simultaneously power five cell phones. ...JPL's fuel cell group has been working on direct methanol fuel cells since the early 1990s and is credited with inventing the technology, largely under funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The creation of the portable power source builds on that work and experience. TechSys, Inc., has the rights to an exclusive license on the development of this micro direct methanol fuel cell technology from JPL's parent institution, the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. TechSys, Inc., intends to commercialize the JPL portable fuel cell technology for civil and defense applications.

4/21/2002   Hydrogen Gets Energetic Boost by Scott Powers - Orlando Sentinel (Florida)

The U.S. Department of Energy officially calls for hydrogen-based energy to replace the equivalent amount of fossil-fuel energy to power 2 million to 4 million American households by the year 2010, and 10 million households by 2030. "Hydrogen is getting major attention by the Bush administration," said John Turner, a principal scientist at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colo. "The administration has caught the vision of hydrogen and what it can do for our economy, our energy security and the environment." The Department of Energy is proposing increasing research funding by $10 million, to about $100 million this year. That does not include the NASA grant, or any Department of Defense research. Still, that's only about half the $200 million the Department of Energy spends on clean-coal technology research.

4/20/2002  Iceland Briefs Minnesota on Benefits of Hydrogen Energy by Mike Nowatzki - Daily Globe (Worthington, MN)

Minnesota officials said hydrogen could also benefit the state's wind industry. Electricity produced by wind power could be used to separate hydrogen from water to create a storable energy source. "It takes away the whole argument of 'Yeah, but the wind doesn't blow all the time,'" said Lisa Daniels, director of Windustry, an affiliate of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Southwest Minnesota's Buffalo Ridge, with its 450-plus wind turbines, would be a prime spot for hydrogen production, one official said. "If it's wind that we use to make hydrogen, it's going to be in the Worthington area, not up here," said Janet Streff of the Minnesota Department of Commerce's Energy Division.

4/18/2002  BMW Promotes Hydrogen-Powered Vehicles - Ananova

Chairman Dr Helmut Panke says Britain could be a major producer of hydrogen, and states: "The potential resources of renewable energies such as wind and wave power are among the largest in Europe, which can be used to generate the electricity needed to extract hydrogen from water." BMW says it's prepared to invest heavily in hydrogen technology, but stresses that a strong political commitment is needed. BP, which is supporting BMW's Clean Energy World Tour, will build the first hydrogen refuelling point in London next year. The Greater London Authority today stepped up its drive to promote hydrogen by forming a partnership with business and motor industry leaders committed to taking forward fuel cell technology.

4/18/2002  NASA Funding $8.1 University Research into Hydrogen Production - Daytona Beach News-Journal (Florida)

NASA wants to find a better way to get the volatile gas closer to its shuttle launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. Currently, the hydrogen is produced near New Orleans and hauled at freezing temperatures in tanker trucks. It takes 50 trucks to haul the more than 300,000 pounds of hydrogen fuel needed for each shuttle launch. Costs of hauling the fuel 600 miles between Louisiana and Florida range in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. "If you could produce hydrogen on site at Cape Canaveral or right nearby, you could at least cut the cost in half, because the transportation is a huge part of the cost," said James Burkhart, a senior research engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. NASA also wants to find a cleaner alternative to existing industrial methods of producing hydrogen, which release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Burkhart said. The universities will test at least 18 new technologies, including processes that use solar energy, electricity and lasers to release hydrogen from water.

4/15/2002  Putting Fuel Cells To the Test by Stuart F. Brown - Fortune 

Next year people living in California and Tokyo could actually glimpse some fuel-cell cars driving around on public roads. Maybe they will even get a chance to kneel down, sniff the tailpipe, and discover that fuel-cell exhaust is truly no different from the warm, moist air rising from a mug of tea.But these won't be the sort of cars ordinary drivers could buy. Honda plans to produce a gaggle of cars for testing with one or two fleet customers in California, and Toyota will do the same in Japan.

4/14/2002  Hydrogen Found in Earth's Crust is 'Limitless Fuel Supply' by Robert Matthews - Electronic Telegraph (UK)

The world's energy problems could be over after the discovery of vast quantities of hydrogen gas, widely regarded as the most promising alternative to today's dwindling stocks of fossil fuels, in the Earth's crust. The find by scientists has stunned energy experts, who believe that it could provide virtually limitless supplies of clean fuel for cars, homes and industry. ...Now scientists at Nasa, the American space agency, have found that the Earth's crust is a vast natural reservoir of hydrogen which has become trapped in ancient rocks. ...According to Professor Friedemann Freund and colleagues at Nasa's Ames Research Centre, in California, the gas is produced when water molecules trapped inside molten rock break down to release hydrogen. "In the top 20km of the Earth's crust, the conditions are right to produce a nearly inexhaustible supply of hydrogen," said Prof Freund.

4/10/2002   Reengineering Algae to Fuel the Hydrogen Economy - Wired

Melis found he could reprogram photosynthesis and stifle internal oxygen flow by depriving the plant cells of sulfur. Under these conditions, the algae pumped out hydrogen for days at a time - lots of it. "We thought maybe we'd get a little hydrogen," Melis says. "But it came out in bulk amounts." An acre of his pond scum, he calculates, could produce enough H2 to power a car from Sacramento to Seattle - and theoretically much farther. Recognizing the commercial possibilities, Melis and his colleagues applied for a patent and published their results in 2000. Last year, he recruited entrepreneur Steve Kurtzer as CEO and engineer James Candy as director of engineering, and Melis Energy was born. The startup's goal: license the technology to power generators, fuel wholesalers, and hydrogen producers. Kurtzer is negotiating with private investors for $10 million to cover R&D. If that comes through, Melis and Kurtzer predict their algae will hit the market in two to five years.

4/10/2002   China to Push Electric Car Development - Asia Pulse

Commercialization of electric vehicles, which are powered by both high-performance, low-cost batteries and a mix of cleaner burning fuels, is likely to be realized by the end of the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005), according to Li Jian, director of the ministry's Department of High-Tech Development and Industrialization. Also, patented technology will be developed to produce fuel cell-powered vehicles by that time, he added.

4/8/2002   Hydrogen Economy by Adam Piore - Newsweek

The roster of experts who see hydrogen as the most likely replacement for oil when the wells run dry now includes the oilmen of the Bush administration, and the futurists at General Motors and Ford. Iceland’s plan is now backed by DaimlerChrysler, Shell and the European Union, which plan to spend tens of millions of Euros to create the first societal lab test of a hydrogen economy. In the coming months, Iceland will roll out three hydrogen-powered buses and begin constructing a filling station where hydrogen gas will be produced on-site. If all goes according to plan, this demonstration will expand to cars and fishing vessels in 2005, and all vehicles within 30 to 40 years. Other nations are likely to follow. The only question is when, says Margaret Mann, an engineer at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “In the long term we have to move to hydrogen. It’s the only way to really divorce ourselves from fossil fuels.”

4/4/2002   Strategy: Oil Alternatives by Steven Lamb - Canoe (Canada)

"Alternative energy stocks are unresponsive to oil prices until oil reaches about $25," says Andrew Bradford, Energy Technology analyst at Raymond James in Calgary. "At that point it triggers a response, as if investors are saying that current technologies like the internal combustion engine work just fine, as long as oil stays inexpensive."

4/4/2002   Honda Fuel Cell Car Still Has Long Way To Go by Yumiko Nishitani - Wall Street Journal

Honda received approval on March 1 from Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport for the public road testing of the FCX-V4. It is the fourth fuel cell-powered car Honda has developed and will be the first to hit the market. The FCX-V4, which carries a 350-atmosphere high-pressure hydrogen tank, allows traveling up to 315 kilometers per full charge of fuel, 75% further than its predecessor, the FCX-V3. Unlike the first two versions, the latest version of Honda's environmental-friendly vehicle carries a capacitor, which stores power that is charged when the car is at a halt. The power stored in the capacitor enables the car to respond faster when the driver steps on the accelerator. In the ongoing race among global automakers to develop cleaner-emission vehicles, only Honda and Volkswagen AG (G.VOW) have adopted the capacitor-assisted fuel cell system, another Honda official said.

4/3/2002  Hydrogen-fed Bacteria May Exist Beyond Earth by John Bluck - NASA Ames Research Center

Recent studies suggest that the mass of bacteria existing below ground may be larger than the mass of all living things at the Earth's surface, according to recent studies cited by the paper's lead author, Friedemann Freund, who works at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. Similar hydrogen-consuming microbes may some day be discovered on Mars, raising new prospects for the possible existence of life beyond Earth, Freund added. ...The paper by Freund and his coworkers also may help answer non-biological questions related to the commercial viability of tapping hydrogen reserves deep in the rocks and to questions of mine safety. 

April 2002  Ford Hydrogen Engine - Society of Automotive Engineers' Automotive Engineering International

Safety was a fundamental vehicle design consideration for this first prototype. The team built upon the experience of Ford's hydrogen fuel cell and compressed natural gas programs to produce a unique system. This triple-redundant system combines active and passive ventilation with hydrogen detectors to enhance safety through redundancy. The heart of this system, the combustible gas detectors, consists of four sensors located in the engine compartment, passenger compartment, and trunk. Alarm conditions are triggered at hydrogen concentrations of 0.6, 1.0, and 1.6% (15, 25, and 40% of lower flammability limit for hydrogen). In addition to the detector, the safety system relied on several ventilation fans to circulate air within the trunk and engine compartments to prevent the formation of high concentration pockets of hydrogen within these areas and create more uniform mixtures at the sensors.

April 2002  Hydrogen: The Fuel of the Future? by Joan M. Ogden - Physics Today

Available hydrogen technologies can dramatically reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. But the switch to hydrogen fuel will require strong political will.

3/28/2002  Portable Fuel Cell Power Sources for Various Applications by Gemma Crawley - Fuel Cell Today

Within the last two years Enable, a subsidiary of DCH Technology, has moved away from its traditional focus of stack and system development, in favour of development of design and packaging of fuel cell systems for specific applications. With this shifted focus, Enable have successfully developed fuel cells, boasting six times the power output of a conventional 'D cell' battery, and integrated these units in to prototype devices. Furthermore, Enable have accomplished the successful packaging of a fuel cell system in to a portable package 'the size of a picnic cooler'.

3/27/2002   World’s First Fuel Cell-Gas Turbine Hybrid Now Operating in California - U.S. Department of Energy

Linked together in a mini-power plant the size of a small house trailer, the advanced generator is being tested at the National Fuel Cell Research Center on the campus of the University of California-Irvine. ...The hybrid generator is the latest innovation to emerge from the Energy Department’s fossil energy fuel cell program. The system combines a Siemens Westinghouse solid oxide fuel cell with an Ingersoll Rand (formerly Northern Research and Engineering Corp.) microturbine. ...The combination is pushing power efficiencies to unprecedented levels. Early test data show electrical efficiencies of approximately 53 percent, believed to be a world record for the operation of any fuel cell system on natural gas. Improvements in the technology could ultimately raise efficiencies to 60 percent for smaller systems and 70 percent or higher for larger systems.

3/26/2002   Raichur 6th Unit to Resume Generation - DH News Service (India)

The sixth unit of the Raichur Thermal Power Station (RTPS), which stopped generation again on Sunday following hydrogen leakage in the seed pump boiler due to the inferior-quality gasket, is all set to resume generation any time tonight with the repairs reaching their final stage. It may be noted that the sixth unit of the RTPS, which had developed a technical snag on Saturday had been reapaired on Sunday early morning. However, the unit had to stop generation on the same day following the problem of hydrogen leakage. Meanwhile, RTPS sources recalled that generator management experts had taken objection to the inferior-quality gasket being used when the hydrogen leakage had occurred on earlier occasions. ...RTPS experts too admitted that it would be a difficult task to refill hydrogen if it becomes empty due to leakage. The lengthy process, which involves testing of the quality of hydrogen, requires 100 hydrogen cylinders. More than anything else, the generation on the unit needs to be stopped till the refilling process is completed, the experts pointed out.

3/25/2002   Fuel Cells Point to Design Flexibility by Rick DeMeis - Product Design and Development

In the GM fuel-cell powered AUTOnomy concept car unveiled in January, engineers threw out preconceived notions of just dropping electric propulsion and power sources into existing automobile configurations. They saw no reason for fuel cells and hydrogen fuel storage to conform to a predetermined form factor, only that they have enough volume for adequate range and speed. With fuel cells providing power with twice the efficiency of internal combustion (according to GM), the best way to use that electrical power, with no conversion losses, is to direct it into electrically-driven, by-wire systems—steering, throttle, and braking—as well as accessories, including climate control. Given an electronic driver interface, engineers came up with a modular approach—put all the power systems in the chassis, a slender "skateboard" to which various car bodies could be electrically docked, much like a laptop computer mated to a desktop station. Four structural attachment points secure the body to the chassis, which may eventually be a slim six inches thick, resulting in an extremely low center of gravity. It's not merely a design exercise—GM has filed for 24 patents based on AUTOnomy's technology.

3/22/2002   First Fuel-Cell Submarine in the World is Christened at the HDW Shipyard - Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG (HDW), Kiel, Germany

This class 212A submarine is destined for the German Navy and is the first of four submarines of this class currently under construction at the yards of HDW in Kiel and Thyssen Nordseewerke in Emden. After comprehensive tests and trials, "U31" is scheduled for commissioning on 30 March 2004. The new submarine class 212 developed by HDW is characterised by an air-independent propulsion system using the hydrogen fuel cell. HDW is thus the first shipyard in the world to offer a fuel cell propulsion system ready for series production. The fuel cell plant, which produces electrical energy from oxygen and hydrogen, permits the new class of submarines to cruise under water for weeks without surfac-ing. Conventional diesel-electric submarines have used up their battery power after about two days cruising under water. In addition, the fuel cell makes no noise and produces no giveaway exhaust heat. These factors help to make the submarine virtually undetectable.

3/21/2002   Mazda Announces Fuel Cell Technology Breakthrough - Auto Asia Magazine

Mazda appears to have made an important breakthrough in fuel cell technology, developing a magnesium titanium alloy that can absorb more than three times the hydrogen as the hydrogen-absorbing alloy currently used in fuel cell vehicles. The Ford affiliate worked with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) on the programme. They created the new alloy by subjecting a mix of small steel bearings, magnesium powder and titanium powder a rapid shaking. The new alloy is able to absorb more than 5% its own weight in hydrogen, a figure that compares very favourably with the 1.4% ratio possible with existing alloys.

3/21/2002   Mazda, Toyota Power Ahead in Fuel Cell Research  - Auto Asia Magazine

The five-seat Premacy FC-EV is powered by a methanol reformer fuel cell system and electric motor. The components, including fuel cell stacks and reformer unit, have been miniaturized to be mounted under the floor. ...Toyota's prototype, launched at an international symposium on fuel cell vehicles to held in Tokyo on 3 March, is a hybrid powered by both fuel cells and a secondary battery, just like the first and second models. But whereas the second model used a methanol reformate method to supply hydrogen to the fuel cell stack, the FCHV-3 employs a hydrogen storage alloy, as the first model did. Moreover, the fuel cell stack in the FCHV-3 boasts a power output of 90kw, which is 4.5 times greater than that of the first model released in 1996 and able to propel the car to speeds above 150km/h - 50% faster than the first prototype.

3/20/2002  DCH Ships Third Fuel Cell - Daily News (CA)

DCH Technology Inc. announced on Tuesday the shipment of a natural gas fuel cell to a new unnamed customer -- a world leader in the storage and distribution of natural gas serving several million customers in nearly two dozen countries. The fuel cell, the third such cell shipped by DCH within the past three months, will be integrated with a fuel processor designed by Illinois-based UOP LLC.

3/18/2002   New Reactor Could Aid 'Clean' Vehicles by Scott Burnell - UPI

The "Reactor 2010" proposal, which aims to have at least one new U.S. reactor operational by the end of the decade, could include the advanced "pebble bed" design, said James Lake, associate director of the Idaho National Energy and Environment Laboratory.  ...Water provides an abundant source of hydrogen, and pebble-bed reactors' operating temperatures of near 900 degrees Celsius would ease the task of breaking up the water molecules, he said. "There are a whole bunch of reactions that do this, such as with iodine as a catalyst," Lake told UPI. "If you make electricity with a reactor and then electrolyze water, you're down to less than 50 percent efficiency in using the fuel ... The research isn't done yet, but we're looking to see if you can use these direct chemical reactions and get 60 or 70 percent efficiency."

3/18/2002   Casio Announces Success in Developing Small Scale Fuel Cells - Ybreo Newswire

Casio's fuel cell technology will be officially presented at a chemical engineering conference to be held on March 27, 2002. More than 100 inventions have been made concerning Casio's fuel cell and the patent applications thereof have been already filed in Japanese Patent Office and other countries. ...In this Compact reformate fuel cell of a super high efficiency, a reformer produces hydrogen from fuel or alcohol such as methanol, and electric energy is generated from the hydrogen through a generating cell. The reformer, so-called a unique micro-reactor formed on a silicon wafer causes chemical reaction to reform methanol to hydrogen gas in the presence of catalyst at a reforming rate of more than 98%. This is the first success in the world in minimizing fuel cell of such high reforming rate. ...Casio aims to commercialize this fuel cell in 2004...

3/16/2002   Hydrogen-Powered Cars Not Around the Corner - Canadian Press/National Post

Gas and diesel-powered cars won't disappear for another 50 years, says the world's largest automaker. General Motors Corp. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars and now has 250 employees working on hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered cars, whose only tailpipe emissions are water vapour, Elizabeth Lowery, GM's vice-president of environment and energy, told the Globe 2002 conference on business and the environment. ..."Whichever method we ultimately decide on, we want to make sure it has a minimal impact on the environment," she said. Hydrogen infrastructure -- the things needed to transport hydrogen and keep hydrogen vehicles fuelled -- are another challenge, she said.

3/14/2002   Power Play Over Fuel Cells

Shortly after a wave of power cuts rolled through California in 2000, Scott Samuelsen, an engineering professor at the University of California in Irvine, and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, started getting frantic telephone calls from all round the state. ...In June 2001, Dr Samuelsen and a group of state representatives formed the California Stationary Fuel Cell Collaborative. Their goal: to encourage fuel-cell manufacturers to speed up developments. The incentive offered: a $400m pledge from the California Consumer Power and Conservation Financing Authority (now known simply as the California Power Authority, or CPA for short) to invest in stationary fuel cells, aggregating purchases on behalf of all government agencies and integrating the technology into the state's power grid. David Freeman, CPA's chairman and a former energy adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is out to make California a national showcase of stationary fuel-cell technology. To do this, CPA is putting up the money not only to buy the latest equipment but also to build modern factories for mass-producing the next generation of equipment. But if fuel cells are to compete with other forms of power generation, Mr Freeman insists that manufacturers must trim costs and boost reliability. In short, their price-performance ratio has to get a lot closer to that of a conventional turbine plant. A group of 18 state and federal agencies is now pooling resources, money and brainpower to hasten the commercialisation of stationary fuel cells. Their support led to the publication in January of CPA's first “bidder's list”, a register of 15 fuel-cell firms—including Plug Power, Siemens Westinghouse, and FuelCell Energy—that will be asked to draw up formal proposals to install stationary fuel cells throughout California. CPA will then award its first round of contracts later this spring. With continued funding over the next three years, Alan Lloyd, chairman of the California Air Resources Board (and a co-chairman of the collaborative with Dr Samuelsen), expects fuel cells to be generating at least 500 megawatts of power across the state.

3/14/2002   Ztek: Company Hoping to Sell Fuel Cells by Matthew Wald - New York Times

A new book, "Tomorrow's Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet," by Peter Hoffmann, (M.I.T. Press, 2001) puts the cost of hydrogen at anywhere from 40 percent as expensive as gasoline to almost four times as much, per unit of energy, although the fuel cell might get more work out of each unit of energy. Enter Ztek. Its product so far is a prototype, which lives in the back of a small panel truck so it can be hauled around for demonstrations. The full-size unit would fill a bay in a service station. The company's projections of cost and efficiency are imprecise, since there is no standard estimate of how many cubic feet of gas a typical car would consume. But Michael S. S. Hsu, Ztek's president and chief executive, said that the bay- size unit could convert 10 gallons of gasoline into about 4,000 cubic feet of hydrogen each hour. Running around the clock, this would be enough to give 30 to 40 cars a day their weekly fill-up.

3/13/2002  CANADA: Canadian Minister of Industry Announces C$20 Million Investment in Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Technologies - National Research Council

Today's announcement will allow the NRC research institute to increase research staff, strengthen its already active fuel cell testing and demonstration program, and expand its contributions to training people for the fuel cell sector as well as its role as a showcase for innovative Canadian technologies and companies.

3/12/2002  Alternative Fuel Researcher Jim Ohi - MSNBC

"What hydrogen fuel cells provide is the opportunity to link a zero emission energy conversion technology (that’s a fuel cell) with a renewable source of energy so that you would have clean power that is also sustainable. So that’s the key reason I think why people are so interested in hydrogen fuel cells. It allows you to link zero pollution with renewable energy. Also another thing is that each region of this country for example has its own sources of renewable energy. In the southwest it could be solar or sunlight. In the upper Midwest it’s wind. In the northwest it’s hydro and biomass. In the southeast it’s biomass. So depending on the resources of the region, they can use those resources renewably and sustainably to provide their energy through hydrogen and through fuel cells. It allows to solve our energy problems and our pollution problems at the same time."

3/12/2002   Tabletop-Fusion Research Sparks Scorching Debate by Shankar Vedantam - Seattle Times/Washington Post

A report on the experiment conducted by scientists at Oak Ridge, Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York and the Russian Academy of Sciences was published in the respected journal Science — against the advice of at least three scientists who reviewed the paper for the journal. "I reviewed the paper twice; I rejected it twice," said William Moss, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. "I told Science you can't publish it because it's not right," said Lawrence Crum, a physicist with the Applied Physics Lab of the University of Washington at Seattle. "They say it was subject to stringent peer review, but does that mean it passed peer review?" asked Seth Putterman, a physicist with the University of California at Los Angeles, who also rejected the article.

3/11/2002   Fuel Cell May Go into Practical Use in 2003 - Nikkei Electronics Asia

Toshiba's idea is to prepare the concentrated fuel and water separately, and the fuel is diluted with water when used for the generation of electricity. The fuel is methanol of 90 mass percent, 2-5 mass percent of which is used for power generation. Since the water is allowed to circulate between an aerial pole and a fuel pole, there is no need to supply externally. Such being the procedure, the energy density could be largely improved, as compared with DMFC that uses a fuel of 2-5 mass percent. However, diluting the fuel with water at the last minute before power generation was only possible with the pump that circulates the fuel and water into in the fuel cell. It may be difficult to use the same system for mobile phones.

3/8/2002   Loving Their Environment: Actor Dennis Weaver Speaks Out on Environmental Issues by Karen Vigil - Pueblo Chieftan (Colorado)

Weaver says today's biggest ecolonomic problem is the U.S. dependence on foreign oil. He says the better technology of using hydrogen to fuel automobiles already exists. If used widely, Weaver said it would reduce the nation's security risk, create thousands of economy boosting jobs and help clean up the environment (since hydrogen-powered vehicles emit steam, rather than poisonous emissions).

3/7/2002   'The Exhaust Pipe on Your Car Would be Just a Tea Kettle' by Tom Paulson - Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Washington)

"All car makers agree that hydrogen would be an ideal fuel," said Peter Hoffmann, author of the "Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter" and a recent book on the subject titled Tomorrow's Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet. "The exhaust pipe on your car would be just a tea kettle," he said.

3/6/2002   Miniature Fuel Cells to Extend Life of Electronics - Daily Californian, University of California, Berkeley 

MEMS research typically entails the construction of electronic devices with moving parts smaller than the width of a human hair.

3/4/2002   Fuel-Cell Partners Win $500,000 Grant San Antonio Business Journal (Texas)

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $500,000 to a public-private partnership led by the Texas Railroad Commission, the state's oil and gas regulator, to help in the development of fuel cells powered by propane gas. ...Others in the group working on the clean-fuel technology are Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio; the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission; the Texas Department of Transportation; DCH Technology/Enable Fuel Cell Corp.; and UOP LLC.

3/2/2002   Still Dreaming of Star Power by Diane Martindale - Discover

Physicists around the world largely agree about how to tap fusion power. Trap a hydrogen plasma in a magnetic field—most fusion experiments use a doughnut-shaped magnetic bottle called a tokamak. Drive the temperatures up to about 180 million degrees Fahrenheit. Then sit back and let nature take its course. Under those conditions, hydrogen nuclei hit each other with so much force that they sometimes stick together and fuse into helium, releasing an enormous amount of energy in the form of fast-moving neutrons. The whole point of fusion is to get out more energy than you put in, but no one has succeeded in doing that yet.

3/1/2002   Panel Questions Cuts in Energy-Research Funding by Christopher Thorne - San Francisco Examiner/AP

The White House has proposed cuts in funding for studies into new energy sources, better pipelines and cleaner-burning fuel. The president's budget keeps the Clean Coal Power Initiative at the same funding level of $150 million. Rep. Joe Skeen, R-N.M., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior, questioned why there were any cuts at all for federal work intended to increase the country's energy supply. ...Among the proposed cuts that drew congressional rebuke was a reduction in funds for studies into hydrogen fuel cells, which create electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. ...The Energy Department has about $27 million in the current budget for fuel cell studies, but the administration has proposed cutting that to $24 million in the fiscal year to begin Oct. 1. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., called the proposed spending cut an arbitrary cut to a program that had been earmarked by Congress for greater funding. Wamp's criticism was echoed by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., who questioned whether the Bush administration was starving federal programs for conservation and alternative energy in favor of the oil industry. "We're losing momentum in areas where we ought to be gaining," Hinchey said.