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UNLV undergraduate students, from left to right, Troy Braithwaite, Jonathan Fiene, Jade Gaal and Jeremy Van Dam pose next to the hydrogen 454 engine that they and Las Vegas businessman Terry Kell developed over the past six months. The engine, which features a computer control system, may further worldwide research on hydrogen use as a substitute for gasoline. Photo by John Gurzinski. Related Story: HYDROGEN MAY BE FUTURE'S POWER SOURCE

Saturday, September 23, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Fuel of dreams

By GLENN PUIT
REVIEW-JOURNAL

From the sidewalk on North 30th Street, Kell's Automotive looks like your traditional auto shop.

Passers-by would never guess that behind the chain-link fence and concrete walls a Department of Energy-sponsored project could help change the world.

In a back room of Kell's, a group of UNLV students has been laboring for six months to develop a computerized Chevrolet 454 engine that rumbles with power from the gaseous hydrogen, not old-fashioned liquid gasoline. That is important because hydrogen is an element that the Department of Energy thinks someday will help reduce the country's dependency on polluting fossil fuels.

"For the long-term, hydrogen is the fuel of choice," said Robert Boehm, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor of mechanical engineering and director of the college's Energy Research Center, which is overseeing the project at Kell's. "Hydrogen is very clean, easily manufactured and renewable," he said.

The development of a hydrogen engine is nothing new. Rick Smith, president of the Hydrogen Energy Center in Portland, Maine, said the Germans ran many of their military vehicles on hydrogen in the 1930s when faced with a severe fuel shortage. In the mid-1980s, Mercedes figured out how to run its largest sedan on hydrogen, and major car companies are engaged in research to make hydrogen consumption a daily part of modern transportation.

But the UNLV students -- Jeremy Van Dam, Jade Gaal, Jonathan Fiene and Troy Braithwaite -- think the advanced computer technology applied to their engine and the way it will be used in an electric bus will help in furthering hydrogen research.

The UNLV students have been asked by the Energy Department to develop a hydrogen engine that could be used to run a generator on an electric bus brought to Las Vegas from Georgia. The goal is to develop the bus so it recharges itself without producing any fossil fuel emissions.

"The problem with electric vehicles is that they don't have very much range, and the batteries run down," Boehm said. "In this case, we will be able to carry our battery charger (the hydrogen engine and generator) with us."

The first step in the project was obtaining the Chevrolet 454 through a donation and then modifying the engine's structure. The modifications were possible because of Terry Kell, whose business develops souped-up engines for boat and drag racers and creates auxiliary power units for businesses such as shopping centers.

Kell's shop is a one-of-a-kind auto shop in Las Vegas. It is equipped with computer-aided manufacturing and design systems, known as CAD and CAM. The systems are special programs that allow the students to produce computerized designs of the engine's components. The designs are entered into high-tech machines that build the engine's components on the premises of Kell's Automotive.

For example, the students had to build combustion chambers larger than a traditional engine so that the hydrogen could be burned as efficiently as gasoline. With Kell's machines and computer programs, the students did so in a matter of weeks.

"It's hard to put a price on the development we've accomplished," Van Dam said. "If you had to contract out all that work, you would be millions in the hole."

What the students have ended up producing is a mass of steel and aluminum that is different from other hydrogen engines in that it has a highly advanced computer control system. The computer system monitors nearly every task of the engine, including its air flow, combustion and fuel injection.

Kell said the engine's volumetric efficiency -- which measures the amount of fuel-air mixture in the engine's cylinders in relation to regular atmospheric air -- is as good as a normal gasoline engine, which is unheard of for a hydrogen engine.

Next, the Energy Department wants the students to put the engine into the bus and hook it up to a generator, which will produce the electricity to run the bus. The four said they are excited about the prospects of showing off to the federal government an electrically run, self-charging bus with an engine that produces no emissions.

Van Dam estimates the group has done five years of highly technical work in about six months.

"Most people are pretty shocked to find out we haven't even graduated yet," Van Dam said.

Boehm said the students have gained a priceless education in how mechanical engineering projects develop in the real world.

"It has been a wonderful experience," Gaal said. "I think the biggest goal for us is to help develop alternative energy because it is so much better for the environment."

And making a high-tech hydrogen engine has been a lot of fun.

"For me, this is the cat's meow," Braithwaite said. "Ever since I was little, I've been working on car engines. This is what I want to do."HYDROGEN MAY BE FUTURE'S POWER SOURCE

• Hydrogen is the lightest element in the periodic table and the most abundant element on Earth. With a partner element, oxygen, hydrogen forms water. It acts as nature's energy carrier when married to carbon in the sugars and more complex carbohydrates made by plants through photosynthesis.

• Hydrogen offers a way to store and regenerate electricity.

• Hydrogen does not produce carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gas.

• Hydrogen use avoids the costs of producing and using fossil fuels.

• It is clean. In the cycle of storing and releasing energy, water is both the source and end product.

• Hydrogen fits with the existing electrical grid infrastructure and can power a vehicle or a house.

• The comprehensive use of hydrogen for energy can eliminate foreign oil dependence.

• Hydrogen can be used to power rockets.

• A fuel cell is an invention that allows hydrogen and oxygen to combine and produce electric energy, heat and water. The cell was invented in the late 1800s but was not refined much until the 1960s, when NASA began to look at fuel cells as a way to provide electricity, heat and water to spacecrafts.

• Las Vegas is expected to be the site of the first hydrogen-electricity co-production center in the world. At the center, Buffalo Drive and Cheyenne Avenue, motorists someday will be able to fill their vehicles with hydrogen. The project is expected to be completed in five years. By next year, some Department of Energy and city vehicles will be running on hydrogen and will refuel at the station.

SOURCE: HYDROGEN ENERGY CENTER