
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 14, 1994                   TAG: 9410140087
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-16   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FUEL CELLS

THE QUEST for low-emission vehicles to wean mobile Americans off their gasoline dependency has led researchers to design an electric vehicle powered by hydrogen fuel cells. If problems of cost and bulkiness - drawbacks that have limited most fuel-cell vehicle demonstration projects to buses - can be overcome, motorists in the next century could be driving on water.

Not literally. But, according to an explanation in "Nucleus," the journal of the Union of Concerned Scientists, water would be the source of the hydrogen fuel, and small amounts of water in the form of humid air would be the only emission from the vehicles. These would be zero-emission vehicles: no pollutants, no greenhouse gases released into the air.

Fuel-cell vehicles can run on various fuels, including gasoline, but the least environmentally damaging is hydrogen. This can be obtained from water through electrolysis, separating the hydrogen from the oxygen using electricity - generated from only renewable resources such as solar or wind power, of course, in this environmentally responsible future.

The fuel cell would convert the chemical energy of the hydrogen into electrical energy, which would power the electric motor.

Scientists say fuel-cell vehicles would have the advantages of battery-powered electric vehicles - clean, quiet, energy efficient and low-maintenance - without the wait required when a battery's power runs down and has to be recharged. Fuel-cell vehicles store fuel in a separate container, which delivers it to the fuel cell when needed. When the fuel runs low, the operator refills the fuel tank, as with a conventional vehicle.

Hydrogen is, of course, flammable - but then, so is gasoline. Engineers are still working on fuel storage systems that would be safe. Hydrogen is currently much more expensive than gasoline and, given the lack of commercial demand, there are no hydrogen stations dotting the roads of America.

California, New York and Massachusetts have adopted standards that will require a certain percentage of new cars to be zero-emission vehicles by certain years - 10 percent by the year 2003. Such policies will bolster development efforts.

But only when consumers are convinced of the advantages for themselves - fuel-cell vehicles eventually will be cheaper to operate because of lower maintenance and greater fuel efficiency, researchers predict - will they jump into the brave new marketplace.

by CNB