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| Car reaches another milestone |
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| Written by John Saiz | Patterson Irrigator | |
| Friday, 06 June 2008 | |
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Hydrogen car full speed ahead LIVERMORE — There’s a Patterson man behind Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s record-setting hydrogen-fueled car.  It's not perfect yet — for one thing, the trunk is filled by a hefty fuel tank — but a Toyota Prius tweaked to run on hydrogen could be just two to 10 years from hitting the consumer market, according to the scientists who built it at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Tim Ross, a rural Patterson resident, is among them, and Wednesday morning at the lab, he had a chance to show off the project that has occupied him the past 14 years. Photo by Elias Funez/Patterson Irrigator The design team’s latest milestone happened in early 2008, when the car’s setup succeeded in storing hydrogen for six days without losing any of it. Previous storage tanks would vent fuel in about three days. Ross and other team members got a chance to show off the car at the lab Wednesday. The converted white Toyota Prius looks much like any other Prius on the road, except where there would be trunk space, there’s instead a big, shiny metal apparatus for storing and delivering hydrogen. One of the team’s next goals is to shrink the fuel storage container. “You want trunks for suitcases, not (hydrogen tanks,)” said Salvador Aceves, group leader for energy conservation and storage. Ultimately, the innovators want to build a hydrogen car that could be mass-produced and sold to the public. “Two or three years, best-case scenario,” Ross said. “I don’t see it more than 10 years out.”  Redesign: A hydrogen fuel tank sits in the trunk of a Toyota Prius modified by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including Patterson's Tim Ross. Photo by Elias Funez/Patterson Irrigator Lab representatives wouldn’t confirm which companies they had entered into partnerships with, but Aceves wore a BMW hat Wednesday with the words “Hydrogen 7” on the side. Ross has been working on the hydrogen car for about 10 years. The lab originally bought the concept from a Southern California company that had been converting Priuses into hydrogen fuel cars that went about 80 miles on each tank. Since then, the team has put an extensive amount of work into the vehicle. “When we were (doing the distance test), I kept a sleeping bag in the office,” Ross said. Hydrogen is one of several emerging alternative fuels that have been in the spotlight lately, especially with escalating gasoline prices and concerns about carbon emissions. “It took the fuel crisis to actually emerge it,” Ross said.  Fill 'er up: Tim Ross of rural Patterson shows off the hydrogen refueling station Wednesday for a hydrogen-fueled vehicle he has helped develop at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Photo by Elias Funez/Patterson Irrigator However, there aren’t too many convenient places to fill up on hydrogen, and just getting usable hydrogen fuel takes energy. So while people might use solar or wind energy to make hydrogen fuel, they also might end up burning coal or petroleum for the purpose, which would counteract the benefits of switching to non-carbon-producing fuels. “There are clean ways to make hydrogen and dirty ways,” Aceves said. Still, the team is hopeful that as the technology develops, costs will fall and clean hydrogen production will become popular. For the scientists seeing their ideas take shape, the process is exhilarating. “We come up with ideas all the time,” Aceves said. “Often, they turn out just to be crazy ideas. It’s exciting to see that this might solve an actual problem.” To reach John Saiz at the Irrigator, call 892-6187 or e-mail him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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