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Hydrogen Fueling Station to be Built at UCLA
Chemical Engineering Partners on Alternative Transportation Research
By Marlys Amundson
A team of chemical engineers in the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering
and Applied Science, led by chemical engineering professor and chair Vasilios
Manousiouthakis and professor William Van Vorst, will help design and build a
hydrogen fueling station at UCLA as part of a larger feasibility study of hydrogen
fuel cell vehicles and related infrastructure in the Southern California basin.
The fueling station is one piece of a collaborative project that will allow researchers to gain real-world experience with fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen producing technologies, address open questions on hydrogen production and fuel cell vehicle performance, acquire and analyze data related to hydrogen fueling infrastructure technologies, and educate the UCLA community and the Southern California public about this developing field.
Interest in hydrogen-fueled vehicles as an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional cars has been growing. Significant impetus to this interest has been provided by President George W. Bush’s initiative making the development of a hydrogen-fuel development and distribution system a national priority, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to establish a network of hydrogen fueling stations in California over the next six years.
“There has been a remarkable reduction in the amount of pollution generated by
a single engine, but the ever-increasing number of fossil-fuel vehicles assures
that air pollution is a continued threat to the public health,” explained Van
Vorst. “Hydrogen, particularly in combination with fuel cells, offers the only
real possibility of pollution-free exhaust emissions.”
UCLA’s chemical engineering department will partner with DaimlerChrysler, BP and the Department of Energy on the hydrogen project, building on Manousiouthakis’ pioneering research in novel methods of hydrogen production and Van Vorst’s seminal work in hydrogen-powered vehicles.
“Universities provide an ideal environment for reaching out to future generations of fuel cell vehicle drivers and familiarizing them with fuel cell technology,” said DaimlerChrysler General Manager Wolfgang Weiss, who heads the fuel cell project in California. “DaimlerChrysler views this project as an excellent opportunity to establish both long-term collaboration in fields of fuel cell technology research, and stronger ties between industry and academia.”
The fueling station, located on the edge of the UCLA campus, will be built and maintained by BP. The station will have limited production capacity, producing 15 kilograms of hydrogen per day, or enough to fill up three to five cars.
In addition to providing fuel for hydrogen-powered vehicles, the station at UCLA will serve as a real life pilot-plant for chemical engineering students, who will be exposed to a hydrogen production technology called reforming. The students will be able to collect and analyze data related to the performance of the hydrogen reforming and purification steps, and view live demonstrations of this real-world application of chemical engineering principles. These principles will be part of several chemical engineering courses on chemical reactor design, process separations, and computer-aided chemical process analysis and design. Additional courses will also be developed, covering fuel cell principles and their application to fuel cell powered vehicles, as well as laboratory classes exploring fuel cell characteristics and efficiency.
DaimlerChrysler will provide the UCLA team with a fuel cell vehicle, F-Cell -
a Mercedes-Benz A-Class, which is part of a 60 car fleet demonstration program
in the US, Europe, Singapore and Japan. UCLA researchers will use the car to
test new theories and technologies, and to educate the next generation of researchers
who will help improve and reduce the cost of fuel cell vehicles.
Hydrogen cars are electric vehicles that generate their power by combining hydrogen and oxygen inside a fuel cell. As hydrogen molecules enter the fuel cell, they pass through diffusion layers, and undergo surface catalytic reactions to become charged hydrogen ions. These ions then pass through a synthetic polymer membrane, called a proton exchange membrane, and react on the other side with oxygen from the air to form water, creating in the process an electric current that powers the car’s electric engine. Unlike gasoline-powered vehicles, fuel cell vehicles emit only water as their exhaust. DaimlerChrysler currently has three types of fuel cell vehicles on the road, including passenger cars, city busses in Europe, Australia and China and delivery service vans in Germany and the US.
Traditional hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles release pollutants where the cars are in use, often in densely populated areas. Hydrogen fuel cells do not generate pollution at the point of energy delivery in the vehicle, making it possible to isolate pollution at the fuel-generation level. This opens the door for fuel production, and its potential pollution, to be located away from urban areas. Furthermore, pollutant generation during production can also be reduced or eliminated altogether through alternate hydrogen production methods. A high-temperature solar collector or hydroelectric dam, for instance, could be used to produce hydrogen without generating any pollution.
“Hydrogen is not a natural energy source, but a means of delivering energy,” noted Manousiouthakis. “You can use traditional resources, such as natural gas, oil or coal, or renewable resources, such as hydroelectric or solar power, to generate the hydrogen.”
Although hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are currently in operation, there are still a number of open issues for researchers in the field. UCLA researchers will be studying the impact of the quality and purity of the hydrogen on performance and fuel consumption, the effects of long-term operation on fuel cells, ways to remove heat from the vehicle’s engine and alternate methods of hydrogen production.
“We’re especially interested in creating efficient means of hydrogen production through identification of novel thermo-chemical cycles for the thermal decomposition of water,” noted Manousiouthakis. “We have already identified several promising thermodynamically feasible cycles consisting of a series of reactions that decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen at lower temperatures.”
Research in hydrogen-powered vehicles has a long history at UCLA. In the early 1970s, a group of students working under the direction of the late professor Al Bush, converted a car to hydrogen fuel usage, and placed first in a national Urban Vehicle Design Contest. Under Van Vorst, graduate work with hydrogen as an internal combustion engine fuel continued throughout the 1970s and ’80s. Van Vorst regards the successful conversion of a vehicle to operate with liquid hydrogen as a noteworthy development in the field.
The UCLA team will interest younger students in this developing technology through educational events on campus and in the community, including talks on how hydrogen fuel cells work and demonstrations of the hydrogen fuel car.
For additional information on Professor Manousiouthakis’ research, please visit http://www.seas.ucla.edu/~vasilios/.
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