WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY, WA, USA. A team of students recently presented a plan for an economical and innovative fueling station that will cater to hydrogen-powered vehicles.

The plan for producing hybrid hydrogen-powered vehicles has long been on the drawing board but has not yet materialized for mass production. It has been considered a very feasible option for future transportation which will surely give petroleum companies a run for their money.

The students behind the fueling station design presented their project during the 2014 Alternative Clean Transportation exposition in Long Beach, California. The event is an international hydrogen design competition where the WSU students won grand prize for their fueling station design.

The Hydrogen Student Design Contest is an annual event which challenges university students to come up with innovative designs for energy applications that are good enough to use in the real world. The challenge for this year’s event was to design an affordably-priced, stand-alone and transportable refueling station for hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars. Although hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars are nothing new, there isn’t enough infrastructure to support them.

The students had to come up with a new design for a hydrogen fueling station that can gas up a vehicle with five kilograms of hydrogen fuel in less than five minutes. This will be enough for a vehicle to travel 300 miles which is similar to what most current gas stations can provide. The design also has to be transportable, low maintenance, easy to permit, low cost and readily mass produced.

Developing new and affordable fueling stations for hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars will surely increase the interest among the masses to use environmentally friendly cars even more. It will also mean lesser carbon emissions in the environment. Using environmentally friendly cars is the only hope to reverse the damage carbon emissions have caused to our already-dying atmosphere.

Ian Richardson led the team of students who designed the award-winning hydrogen fueling station. He is a graduate student in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. He also said “Hydrogen is everywhere. You can get it from anything, and the emissions of fuel cell electric vehicles are just water.”

Jake Leachman, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and an advisor on the project also said that “The design the students developed looks to be completely implementable right now. We want to build one, and we should. The business model/idea is innovative and could lead to a start-up company.”

Image courtesy of pixabay.com