I thought this artcile would be of interest:
Powered by sunlight
Student project leaps into future
Bob Golfen
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 1, 2004 12:00 AM
The ungainly looking Chevy pickup parked in the
courtyard at Central High School, with a huge set of
solar panels mounted on top, may not look so
futuristic.
But it certainly points the way.
Hand-built on a shoestring budget by a Central physics
teacher and a team of students, the truck is one of a
kind, a demonstration of how future transportation can
be self-sustaining and pollution-free.
The truck is hydrogen-powered and creates its own fuel
from solar energy and water, a technical feat that
rivals the advanced technology being researched by
major auto companies and universities. The
four-cylinder engine is tuned to run on hydrogen,
which is produced by a hand-built electrolysis system
mounted in the bed.
Teacher Cory Waxman and his students took four years
to build the experiment, believed to be the only
self-sustaining hydrogen vehicle that uses a
conventional internal-combustion engine.
"Nobody has ever made a car that runs on sunlight and
water," Waxman said. "There are other cars that run on
hydrogen, but they don't make their own fuel."
Built for less than $10,000, the project has caught
the attention of experts in alternative-fuel research.
"Over the past three years of research in hydrogen,
I've been more impressed with what they did than
anything else I've seen around the world," said
Scottsdale inventor Bryan Beaulieu, who is building a
hydrogen-powered house in north Scottsdale. "With
practically no resources, they are doing something
everybody says it's going to take 20 years to do."
Although the truck performs as planned, it's more of a
demonstration project than a practical vehicle. The
four solar panels and hydrogen-generating system
create only enough fuel per day to travel a few miles.
But that was expected, Waxman said, and the students
have a motto that underlines the pioneering nature of
the project: "How far did the first airplane fly?"
When the vehicle's tanks are filled with compressed
hydrogen from an outside source, it has the range of a
conventional vehicle, though that defeats the purpose
of showing that hydrogen can be created from clean,
sustainable sources, then used to fuel vehicles.
The truck also can be shifted to conventional power
using a dashboard switch, which changes the fuel
system over to a gasoline tank and fuel-injection.
The students in the Environmental Technology Club who
built the hydrogen truck recognize its experimental
nature.
"We want to inform the public that there are different
alternative fuels and what can be accomplished," said
Nicolas Paredes, a 17-year-old senior.
Most of the club members are new this year, the
previous years' members having graduated. Nine
students attended a recent after-school meeting to
access the condition of the hydrogen truck, which was
parked all summer and requires some repair, and make
plans to advance the project.
During the meeting, Waxman said the group plans to
make improvements to the existing solar-hydrogen truck
plus tackle a new project: a self-sustaining
solar-hydrogen vehicle that uses fuel cells to power
an electric drive system.
The main challenge of building the solar-hydrogen
truck was research, with much of the
hydrogen-generating system designed by trial and
error, Waxman said.
"The problem is there's no manual that says how to do
this," the 39-year-old teacher said. "We had to
investigate how to make hydrogen for this."
Last spring, the project won a first prize and grand
prize at the Central Arizona Regional Science and
Engineering Fair and was a finalist in May at the
International Science and Engineering Fair in
Portland, Ore. Graduating senior Soroush Farzin, a
leader in the project, entered it in the fairs.
Much of the solar-hydrogen truck project was completed
through private donations and volunteer labor,
including solar panels donated by Beaulieu. Mechanical
work and technical assistance was provided by Kevin
Fern of AFVTech, which stands for Alternative Fuel
Vehicle Technology.
Waxman and Fern gave a tour of the vehicle, showing
how the solar panels create energy for the six
electrolysis units mounted in a complex-looking maze
of tubes and wires that make up the solar-hydrogen
production unit. From there, the hydrogen is filtered
for impurities and stored in two large air tanks.
The hydrogen is fed into the engine using
stainless-steel lines, a pressure regulator and fuel
injectors similar to what might be found in a vehicle
powered by propane or natural gas.
An electronic control unit had to be specially tuned
so that the four-cylinder engine could use the
hydrogen efficiently.
"It's really a simple process," Fern said of the
engine conversion. "The programming (of the electronic
control unit) was the only difficulty."
Beyond learning about solar energy and hydrogen power,
the club provides a lesson in teamwork, said Tiarra
Campbell, 17, a senior.
"Besides understanding the system, this is an
opportunity to work with people who are all different,
who don't know each other as close friends, and create
something like a hydrogen car," Campbell said.
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