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By Jean Andrews

For the first time in the history of the automobile, realistic alternatives to gasoline-powered vehicles are becoming available to the average consumer, and the pace of change is accelerating rapidly. Toyota and Honda have begun to offer competitively priced hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles, with Ford, Saturn, Lexus, and Chevrolet soon to follow. Researchers at USF's Clean Energy Research Center are focusing on the development of the next generation in fuel sources - hydrogen power.

Engineering Professor Lee Stefanakos is the director of the Clean Energy Research Center.

Nonpolluting and available in infinite amounts in the air and water around us, hydrogen could be a significant solution to the serious environmental and health problems caused by fossil fuels. These fuels, oil in particular, are nonrenewable resources, and their availability is subject to the increasingly volatile nature of international politics.

Despite periodic shortages and rising prices of oil, the development of solar-powered vehicles and experiments with gasohol, consumers have resisted efforts to wean themselves from the familiar internal combustion engine and the gasoline that makes it go.

"Although alternative fuel vehicles clearly have advantages, their adoption is largely hindered by the lack of infrastructure to support them, says Eric Harris, who teaches marketing at USF Lakeland. "Automobile manufacturers must assure consumers that all the required services will be easily attainable. Consumers prefer to adopt products that can be easily integrated into their current consumption patterns, and this has not been the case for most of these automobiles."

But a new day in alternative fuels is dawning, and this time around, attention is being paid to the issues Harris identifies. The research is addressing hydrogen fuel cells themselves, the infrastructure that will be needed for fuel production and distribution, and consumer education and government policy planning.

The Ford Focus I: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle prototype was brought to campus by CUTR as part of the "Advanced Transportation Energy Choices" research project.

"Hydrogen fuel could become a major area of research strength at USF," says Ian Phillips, vice president for research. "We already have in place the Clean Energy Research Center and faculty in chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering as well as in marine science and chemistry. They are engaged in research on hydrogen and fuel cells funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation in collaboration with research faculty at UF and UCF. However, this is only a start of the kind of funding that is needed. As alternative fuels become part of the national agenda, USF will become increasingly involved through our colleges of Engineering, Marine Sciences, and Arts and Sciences and our centers such as the Clean Energy Research Center and the Center for Urban Transportation Research."

A major part of the USF activity is taking place in the College of Engineering, some of it under the umbrella of the Clean Energy Research Center, headed by Lee Stefanakos, chair of the electrical engineering department. A total of eight faculty members and 15 graduate students from the chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering departments are working on a variety of projects, and the center itself is part of a NASA-funded fuel-cell research program administered by the University of Central Florida.

The integrated electric power train of the Ford Focus I is basically an electric motor. This car is a "Zero Emissions Vehicle."

Prior to turning his attention to fuel cells, Stefanakos had been involved with research on electric cars, but he sees the hybrids as more promising and expects them to become quite popular; they perform as well as gasoline-powered cars, cost an affordable $20,000, and need no new infrastructure. Hybrids are just one alternative, however, and researchers are now taking the next step to find another.

In the new scenario they're creating, hydrogen stations would replace some of today's gasoline stations; fuel cells in which pure hydrogen is efficiently converted to electricity would replace a car's engine, and out of the exhaust would come not partly burned hydrocarbons and other pollutants but a little bit of clean water - so clean, says Stefanakos, that you could drink it.

Fuel cells also promise to significantly improve the efficiency of cars - from about 20 percent for gasoline engines to 30 or 40 percent if a reformer must be used to first convert a fuel such as methanol into hydrogen, and up to 80 percent if pure hydrogen is the fuel.

But don't start shopping for a fuel-cell car just yet. Running a car on nonpolluting hydrogen seems like a great idea, but it's not easy. Hydrogen can't simply be plucked out of the air, water or any of the other substances in which this element is found. Stefanakos points out that a number of things have to happen before widespread use of fuel cells will be possible.

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