NASA facility proposes to become hydrogen demonstration site

Biloxi, Miss.-area NASA facility proposes to become hydrogen demonstration site

Apr. 24--STENNIS SPACE CENTER -- By David Tortorano, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Talk to Stephen Brettel for a few minutes about hydrogen and how it could become the fuel of the future and you'll get the sense he feels he's on the ground floor of something big.

And he could be right.

Stennis Space Center has a proposal on the table to become a hydrogen demonstration site, working with everything from fuel cells to hydrogen powered vehicles and more. And that will translate into jobs. How many? Far too early to tell.

The hydrogen fuel initiative, announced in 2003, is designed to reverse dependence on foreign oil by developing hydrogen as an alternative fuel. The initiative seeks to develop the infrastructure to make fuel cell vehicles cost-effective by the year 2020.

"I think it's a significant opportunity for this part of the country to be an incubator of the next evolutionary fuel source," he said.

Brettel, program manager for rocket propulsion tests at Stennis Space Center, is also director of program development for the NASA facility. He thinks Stennis could play a large role in the president's multibillion-dollar hydrogen fuel initiative.

"We have more experience in the handling of hydrogen than any place in the world," said Brettel, noting that Stennis is an authority on the handling of the highly combustible fuel.

NASA's Tom Donaldson is on his side.

"We are the largest user of hydrogen in the United States," Donaldson, director of the Space Center, said during a recent lecture. "We have developed the infrastructure and a capability unique in the nation."

Indeed, as part of its mission, Stennis uses 900 tanker loads of hydrogen a year, some 10 million gallons. It's brought in to Stennis in liquid form, and piped to stands for use in propulsion testing.

Stennis' infrastructure includes an underground, pressurized gas supply system that moves the fuel to storage tanks, and on-site liquid hydrogen storage/handling/transfer systems, including a 600,000-gallon storage sphere.

Brettel said he was out in the test area one day and wondered how much hydrogen is vented during each test. He found it was 55,000 gallons. On top of that, every day just to maintain the cold lines, some 500 gallons boil off.

That, he said, is what makes the facility a good option for playing a major role in the initiative. It has hydrogen to spare, now and in the future.

Stennis uses a clean hydrogen for propulsion testing, and what's vented is not of a quality that can be reused. Stennis has found it's cheaper in the long run to buy more hydrogen than capture, clean and turn back into a liquid the vented material.

But the vented hydrogen can be recaptured and used in other projects that do not require the same degree of purity.

Brettel for weeks now has been making pitches and proposals to a host of potential partners.

"If you can do it at a place like Stennis, develop the standards for safety, distribution," said Brettel, "we can roll that out into the economy."

Interested companies can contact Brettel at stephen.p.brettel@nasa.gov or at 688- 1126.

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