Scientists don't have crystal balls, but looking ahead is a big part of what they do. At DRI's Energy and Environmental Engineering Center (EEEC), a group of researchers is peering into the future of energy production, and they say it's clean. Or, at least, it can be if policy makers, industry, and consumers embrace the technologies DRI researchers are working on.

When Dr. Alan Lloyd became director of EEEC in 1996, he joined a group of scientists who, under the leadership of Dr. William Pierson, had become world leaders in air quality research with particular expertise in pinpointing pollution sources--from automobiles to power plants. Now Lloyd is augmenting those achievements by establishing an energy laboratory within EEEC designed to find ways to make those pollution sources cleaner. "Look at the way Nevada, especially the Las Vegas area, is growing," he points out. "It's clear that we need to balance economic growth with environmental quality, and one way to do that is to pursue clean technologies such as fuel cells." Lloyd believes these technologies will also have a major impact on criteria pollutants in the world's megacities and help to significantly reduce global climate change gases. As a result, Lloyd with help from Richard Egami, a long-time EEEC faculty member, has helped re-establish an energy focus within the Center.

At the heart of the Center's year-old energy lab is Glenn Rambach, who came to DRI from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Rambach is urgently enthusiastic about promoting clean energy sources. The stakes are high, he says, and he can quote the statistics to prove it. For instance, the approximately two billion people who live in China and India (one-third of the world's population) use less than four percent of the oil energy that we use in the United States. "They would like to catch up to us, even just a little, and, when they do, there will no longer be any question of global warming. It will be a reality ." If the environmental argument isn't compelling enough, there is a good economic one as well. The United States currently spends $52 billion a year to import foreign oil and another $50 billion to protect and maintain that supply. According to Rambach, "There is a vastly uneven distribution of fossil fuel energy in the world, and we spend huge amounts bringing it to the places that demand it." With this in mind, Rambach has set a goal for the energy lab and himself: "We have to find ways to implement long-term energy strategies for the nation and for the world. A large part of that strategy is going to be renewable energy." Renewable energy isn't new; various forms are used throughout the United States and the world. Hydroelectric and nuclear power are the most significant sources; but we also use wind, solar, geothermal, and a handful of others. These things are good, Rambach says, very good; but he sees another important player in the clean world of the future: a device called the fuel cell.

Basic PEM fuel cell mechanism

The fuel cell isn't new either. In fact, it was invented in 1839 (some 50 years before Henry Ford built his automobile) by judge and occasional physicist, Sir William Grove. Grove's discovery didn't get a lot of use until the 1960s, when fuel cells were employed to provide electricity and water for the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. Today they do the same for the space shuttle missions.

In principle, a fuel cell works like a battery. It produces electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen electrochemically, without combustion. However, unlike a battery, a fuel cell doesn't run down or require recharging. It will produce energy in the form of electricity and heat as long as its fuel--hydrogen--is supplied. Its only "exhaust" is pure, plain, and perfectly drinkable water. A fuel cell consists of two electrodes separated by an electrolyte--a material that conducts electricity by the passage of electrically charged atoms, or ions. Oxygen passes over one electrode, while hydrogen passes over the other. As the hydrogen is ionized, it "loses" an electron. The hydrogen and the electron then take separate paths to the second electrode: the hydrogen migrates through the electrolyte, while the electron travels an external circuit. Along the way, a few of these electrons can be used to power any electrical device, like a motor. At the second electrode, the hydrogen and electrons combine with oxygen to form water.

The PEM fuel cell converts hydrogen and air into useful electricity and water with no emissions and greater efficiency than a fossil fueled generator.

To generate useful amounts of electrical current, fuel cells are "stacked," like a club sandwich. Fuels cells fall into various categories, using different electrolytes and operating at different temperatures; and each type tends to be best suited for certain applications. They are typically named for the electrolyte being used in the cell: Solid Oxide, Phosphoric Acid, or Molten Carbonate, for example. There are also various ways to get hydrogen to use in a fuel cell. The cleanest way to obtain hydrogen is by passing an electric current through water, thereby splitting it into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can be stored and run through fuel cells as needed.

So why don't we have this miracle technology running everything from our minivans to our mixers? The not so surprising answer is cost. For the time being, fuel cells cost much more than the average consumer is willing to pay. But, as Rambach points out, "not every consumer is an average one, and innovations are rarely dropped upon us in perfectly usable form. Remember when computers filled entire rooms? If you look at every other technology that we've come to embrace, it's hard to think of one that was introduced in its final form. We need to find current niches that will accept the technology as it stands today. From there, it doesn't take a lot of vision to see where else it could go."

Those niches definitely exist, and DRI has people working to fill them. Fuel cell use generally splits into two categories: transportation and stationary power generation. On the transportation side, Lloyd and Robert Wichert (a new member of EEEC who came from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District bringing long-term knowledge of renewable energy and fuel cells) are working on a joint project on fuel cells for locomotives in collaboration with Breakthrough Technologies Institute (BTI), a nonprofit corporation formed in 1993 with a mission to promote advanced energy and environmental technologies. This project, and one on accelerating the use of fuel cells, particularly in developing countries, are funded by the Charlottesville, Virginia-based W. Alton Jones Foundation.

Arne LaVen, a DRI graduate research assistant and University of Nevada, Reno student, is also looking at various fuel cell applications in transportation. While LaVen is certainly not the first on the scene--all of the major auto manufacturers are spending large amounts of money on research, and fuel cell buses are being road-tested in the United States and Canada--he is hoping to find market niches beyond big vehicles. LaVen has worked on projects to develop fuel cell-powered golf carts in Palm Desert, California, as well as utility vehicles for airports and factories. With funding from the W. Alton Jones Foundation, he is now looking at how fuel cells might replace two-stroke engines like those found in snowmobiles, jet skis, and generators. And he is set to begin building a fuel cell-powered scooter.

"Scooters," he says, "are a good place to start, not only because of their small fuel and performance requirements, but also because there is a potential international market for them in densely populated urban areas of the world." LaVen is on the lookout for a domestic market as well, and he hopes to find just the right kind of business--perhaps a big-city messenger service-- to sponsor the development of a small fleet of scooters.

While service-oriented vehicles like buses, golf carts, and scooters are part of the here and now, the use of fuel cells in the family car is still to be perfected. According to LaVen, "Its's not as easy to make an American passenger vehicle where we demand power as well as room for the kids and groceries. But we'll get there, maybe in a decade or so." In fact, Daimler-Benz plans to have fuel cell cars, with a Ballard fuel cell, commercially available within six years.

If fuel cells will be powering our cars in a decade, will they also be heating our homes and running our hair dyers? It's possible, says Rambach, although right now fuel cell power generation on a megawatt scale would be far too expensive. Instead, power generation is being tested on a smaller scale, in remote areas without power grids. "Alaska has about 200 separate 'utility districts,'" says Rambach, "and a lot of those consist of someone sitting next to a diesel generator. Dozens of small Alaskan communities pay between $.25 and $.75/kWh for electricity, while the national average is less that $.10/kWh. These areas, where energy costs are already high, are the logical commercial entry points for renewable technologies like fuel cells."

Glenn Rambach (left) and Jeremy Snyder in DRI's energy laboratory.

University of Nevada, Reno graduate student Jeremy Snyder is also working in DRI's energy lab designing and implementing hydrogen energy stations for such isolated areas. Snyder is a graduate research assistant supported, in part, by a $10,000 fellowship from BTI which has long promoted the potential of fuel cells. BTI's executive director, Bob Rose, says he hopes the fellowship will contribute in some small way to the "education of a new generation of technological leaders." Because of Snyder's work, the fellowship may also contribute to the availability of reliable, cost-effective, and renewable power to isolated Alaskan communities.

Snyder says that renewable energy forms are not necessarily new in such communities--many have abundant wind power, and some have the potential for solar power. The problem is that the wind and the sun rarely coincide perfectly with peak demands for electricity. That's where fuel cells come in. "They need a storage technology," explains Snyder, "and a very good way to get that is to run some of your electricity through water, splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen, and storing the hydrogen in tanks. Then, when the wind's not blowing or the sun's not shining, you run that hydrogen through a fuel cell and get clean, versatile power." Before any real-world testing, Snyder will create a computer model that, given the power needs and current electricity generating capabilities of a community, will help design the best, most efficient system. The next step will be a miniature version, probably to be built at DRI's Dandini Research Park in Reno. "We'll make a subscale system of about five kilowatts," Snyder explains. "The real one will probably be about 100 kilowatts." And finally, if all goes well and the Department of Energy agrees to funding, a real-life working demonstration station is planned for the community of Kotzebue, Alaska.

Bringing this technology to Alaska may well be the first step toward bringing it to the rest of the world, especially to developing countries, with the potential to dramatically increase world fuel consumption. With this in mind, and with funding from the W. Alton Jones Foundation and possibly others, DRI will hold a conference in late July at Lake Tahoe. The primary goals of the conference are education and identification of commercial markets for fuel cells in the developing countries. With international officials and leaders, technologists, and fuel cell vendors in attendance, DRI hopes to communicate the many advantages of fuel cells, outline some of their potential applications, and provide the opportunity to meet the people and organizations that can help establish the technology. Prior to the conference, representatives from China, India, and Latin America will visit DRI and learn more about fuel cells and current research as well as receive help translating important information about fuel cells into their native languages. It's just this kind of international communication that will bring these countries, and our own, one step closer to a future of clean, renewable energy.

Jackie Allen