Zoomi Life

It’s not going to win any design contests for looks and the use of duct tape and dryer vents doesn’t lend it any safety or credibility merits, but it works. I guess that was the point these college students were trying to get across.

Alex Bell and Andres Pacheco are engineering students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and wanted to build something radical.

“Our goal was to design and build a hydrogen fuel cell powered motorcycle to test the efficiencies of hydrogen fuel cell, internal combustion, and battery propulsion.”

Using the chasis of a Buell cyclone (purchased from a salvage yard), the two set to work. A Polymer Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell from Ballard makes up the energy production bit while a matched 1.2kW AC motor from CFR Italy makes up the power plant.

The energy storage medium for the hydrogen is also unique, being metal hydride cylinders rather than standard compressed gas cylinders. These work by absorbing the hydrogen into metallic materials that “sponge” it up rather than the more dangerous compression method. Basically, powderized metals (Lathnium, Nickel, and Aluminum) are used as the “sponge” to attract the hydrogen and store it at low pressure.

Less is stored per litre, but less energy is used to put the hydrogen into storage this way as well. For a small application like this, that’s probably perfect.  Heat energy is required to remove the hydrogen from the cells, however, which in this case is produced by electricity.

The bike had a hard time running at full power due to software errors in the controller upon testing, but that is currently being resolved. Meanwhile, the bike does run and the two builders expect it will be at full throttle (so to speak) in a few weeks.

They estimate that the bike is currently running at about 46% total efficiency and they think the design will allow that to be boosted past the 60% mark when complete. That estimate includes losses due to propulsion, weight, friction, and so forth and is much higher than the average gasoline motorcycle’s efficiency of about 1/2 of that.

Check out the videos:

Source: TreeHugger