I am forwarding part of the note I received from Steve Gilchrist of CHEC in response to my inquiry. (I have snipped out some text pertaining to personal and local political matters. It does not affect the tone or information of interest to this list.) I thought the information about using the unit with biodiesel blend fuel would be of particular interest.
Darryl -------- Original Message -------- Dear Darryl; As someone with twenty years experience and interest in all matters relating to hydrogen, I, too, was quite surprised when I happened upon this company back when I was the Commissioner of Alternative Energy for the province. At that time, the company had already been selling into the long haul truck market for six years, and the first prototype was built all the way back in 1983. My initial skepticism was addressed by seeing the downloads from 40 million miles of use on trucks (we have now passed 60 million miles of use) and by reading over two dozen scientific papers from various universities and research facilities such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, Ca. Since joining the company, some of the largest fleets in North America have bought the technology, with some fleets outfitting 100% of their units. At the same time, municipalities have purchased units for buses, ambulances and SUV's and we're on diesel gen-sets, motor homes and boats. As a technology capable of reducing emissions - today, not forty years from now as fuel cells promise - we are one more option, on a list that certainly includes bio-diesel. You are quite correct about a rail application and we've actually been approached by CN to build trial units for one or more of their locomotives. We have had customers use bio-diesel mixes ranging from 5 to 20% and they report fuel improvements in line with what they get from petro-diesel. Given the physical properties of hydrogen, and it's combustion properties relative to bio-diesel (or, for that matter, any other combustible material) it will improve the fuel economy and emissions profile of any mixture of bio-diesel. We have had several offers of large scale tests and we are likely to take one that would run in California, which would eliminate weather considerations. Regards, Steve Gilchrist -- Darryl McMahon http://www.econogics.com It's your planet. If you won't look after it, who will? _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
