Jan 14 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Tom Avril The Philadelphia Inquirer

As Jim Flanagan makes his rounds in a white Ford van, his electrician tools in the back, the vehicle seems no different from any other in the maintenance fleet at Pennsylvania State University.

That all changes when he stops for a fill-up.

Every day, at a service yard across the street from the football stadium, Flanagan pulls up to a slender white pillar and connects a sturdy metal nozzle to his gas pipe.

In this case, the word gas is literal. With a loud mechanical hum, the nozzle dispenses a blend of natural gas and the lightest element on earth: hydrogen.

Hydrogen has been spoken of for years as a key to cars of the future. Now, in a very limited way, it seems the future is already here.

Besides Penn State -- home to more than 100 engineers, chemists, physicists, and others studying the gas as a transportation fuel -- a handful of institutions are starting to use hydrogen in their vehicle fleets.

And Honda, GM and BMW are rolling out hydrogen models for regular consumers, albeit in extremely small numbers -- making the average American car seem like a pollution-belching relic by comparison.

More than 60 filling stations have been built nationwide, according to the National Hydrogen Association -- including 21 in (where else?) California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger envisions a "hydrogen highway."

Early adopters such as Flanagan, who has been using the customized van since March, give the technology good reviews. "Never knew I was driving anything different," the electrician said.

The van burns the gas mixture in an internal combustion engine, with 40 percent lower emissions than a vehicle that runs on pure natural gas (which, in turn, is far cleaner than a traditional gasoline-powered car).

Even cleaner are the more futuristic hydrogen cars that get their juice from devices known as fuel cells. Put simply, these cells derive energy from the chemical reaction that combines hydrogen with oxygen. The emissions? Just plain water.

But don't trade in your gasoline-swilling clunker just yet.

Depending on whom you believe, hydrogen-fueled cars won't be available in any meaningful numbers for one to four decades -- if indeed they ever do become the preferred solution to our fossil-fuel-dependency woes. Some caution that if the early rollout of hydrogen vehicles is too aggressive, it may inflate consumer anticipation before the infrastructure and technology are ready for a spin.

"There are some significant challenges between here and Highway 66," said Richard G. Newell, a Duke University associate professor of energy and environmental economics.

Talk to anyone in the fledgling industry for a few minutes, and inevitably they'll bring up the old barnyard cliche about chickens and eggs. What comes first? The pumps? Pipelines? Fuel storage?

The cars? They remain prohibitively expensive, because so few are made and because fuel cells are still a work in progress.

So hydrogen researchers at Penn State's H2E Center and elsewhere are addressing all aspects of the challenge at once.

One of the latest advances comes from the lab of Bruce Logan, who is also director of the Penn State center.

An energetic, bearded fellow who drives a Toyota Prius hybrid but who usually walks more than a mile from home to school, Logan studies how to "make" hydrogen.

It's the most plentiful element in the universe, but it is generally bonded to other elements such as carbon and (in the case of water) oxygen.

So these molecules must be broken apart -- a process that requires a fair amount of energy, especially in the case of splitting water. Not so good when the end goal is to make energy.

For now, hydrogen is most often produced by using steam to "reform" natural gas -- which consists mainly of methane, a hydrocarbon. But that's a fossil fuel, and the process releases heat-trapping greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming. Besides, the United States gets more of its natural gas every year from abroad, a concern when it comes to energy security.

Logan's earth-friendly alternative: Use bacteria to do most of the hard work instead. With colleague Shaoan Cheng, Logan has built small reactors that use common wastewater microbes to break down hydrogen-containing molecules ranging from vinegar to glucose.

The researchers must supply a bit of electrical voltage to keep the process going at a meaningful rate, and their reactors are tabletop size, so they aren't producing large amounts of hydrogen just yet.

So far, however, it's among the most efficient means of producing hydrogen gas in a renewable fashion. They described the process in a November paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Nature already knows how to do what we want," Logan said of the bacteria. "That's been going on for a billion years or more. We can optimize that process."

At the moment, two reactors the size of D batteries are humming away in the lab, running on a slurry made from hog manure. In addition to producing hydrogen, the process has the added benefit of treating the wastewater.

The H2E Center isn't housed in a single building. Elsewhere on campus, its associate director, Joel Anstrom, tinkers with his fellow mechanical engineers in a garage.

Anstrom's projects include converting six more vans to run on hydrogen, like Flanagan's, and also building a fuel-cell car dubbed the HyLion, after Penn State's familiar feline mascot.

All will fill up their tanks at the hydrogen station on campus, as does a Centre Area Transportation Authority bus that is already on the streets.

The filling station, which is among the first on the East Coast, gets its hydrogen from natural gas -- the technique that scientists want to avoid in the long run, because of the climate-change and energy-dependency issues.

But for now, it's a great way to demonstrate the concept, thereby spurring development of the cars themselves, Anstrom said.

"Nobody's going to build the vehicles if there isn't fueling infrastructure," he said.

If the production volume is high enough, hydrogen can be made this way almost as cheaply as the equivalent amount of gasoline, he said -- especially now, with pump prices well above $3 a gallon in Pennsylvania.

One thing none of the researchers really worry about is the Hindenburg factor. Yes, the giant aircraft was filled with the ultralight gas when it went up in flames in 1937, but Anstrom said that on balance, hydrogen isn't any less safe than gasoline.

It's more flammable, but it also dissipates far more quickly than gasoline, whose fumes are heavier than air and tend to linger, Anstrom said.

In any event, the Penn State filling station has a state-of-the-art, computer-controlled leak-detection system -- much more sophisticated than the typical gasoline pump.

Anstrom, Logan and their colleagues are in the cautious world of research, and they get cagey when asked to forecast where this is all headed.

In the long run, they say, solar power might be the answer to transportation in sunny parts of the country, whereas some form of Logan's bacteria process might make sense elsewhere. The energy might be stored in the form of hydrogen or, thanks to recent improvements in the technology, in traditional batteries.

"Let's not talk about one answer," Logan said. "What works best in Tucson, Arizona, may not work best in Des Moines, Iowa, or in State College, Pennsylvania."

Anstrom concurs.

"I am not really a hydrogen person or an electric-vehicle person or a hybrid person," he said, adding that the true test of the science is in the marketplace. "You have to try in order to find out whether it's really going to work or not. It's the American way."

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Penn State Hydrogen Center

The H2E Center consists of more than 100 researchers tackling various aspects of using the element as a fuel.

Its name is a play on "hydrogen to energy," as well as the natural form of hydrogen gas, written as H2.

Key areas of research

Production: A goal is to make hydrogen gas without using fossil fuels. One effort relies on bacteria to break down organic molecules. Another uses solar energy.

Distribution: Hydrogen can be made at individual filling stations. For mass distribution through pipelines, however, engineers must deal with its propensity to turn steel brittle.

Storage: Though hydrogen is the lightest element, as a gas it takes up a lot of space. Rather than compressing it to fit in a vehicle's tank, some scientists are experimenting with storing it in a carbon "bed."

Generating energy: Fuel cells currently use platinum to catalyze the chemical reaction that yields the electricity to power a car. But the metal is scarce, and scientists are seeking alternatives.

More on the center and its work: http://go.philly.com/earth

Contact staff writer Tom Avril at 215-854-2430 or tavril@phillynews.com.