Tweet
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.
Comment