Fuel Cells

In the Motor City, the place built on the gasoline-powered engine, the big news recently was hydrogen. At the recent car show, Detroit unveiled a prototype car powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Not simply a concept car, but potentially the most revolutionary development in automobility since Henry Ford made cars affordable to the masses. This car promises to make driving an environmentally clean proposition. No more carbon monoxide; no more ozone; no more of the other noxious toxins that cars currently spew into the atmosphere and into our lungs in such abundance.

The smell of jet exhaust permeates the air at Pittsburgh International Airport as Richard H. McClelland unlocks a gate near an aircraft hangar. "It's just a beige box," said McClelland, pointing to a tractor-trailer- size contraption inside. "Nothing really very sexy. " Behind the gate stands a hydrogen fuel cell, a futuristic power plant dressed in plain, off-white clothing. "It's doing what it's designed to do, which is to sit there and make electricity automatically," said McClelland, the fuel cell project manager for Consolidated Natural Gas Co. of Pittsburgh.

A fuel cell sounds like an engineer's dream: You put in hydrogen and oxygen, you take out electricity and water, you get no pollution, and you waste very little energy. But as the space shuttle Columbia's aborted flight shows, the technology has not yet been fully mastered. Although fuel cells have been supplying energy to spacecraft since the 1960s, down-to-earth applications, such as in automobiles and power plants, are not in hand. Practical fuel cells are "still just over the horizon; they're not quite here," said Robert Mauro, executive vice president of the Fuel Cells Commercialization Group, the industry's trade association.

Recently I attended the largest "clean car" event in the world, the Challenge Bibendum in northern California, where General Motors' Hy-Wire high-tech concept car was a big attraction. Sponsored by Ford Motor Co. and Michelin (Bibendum is the French name for the tire company's mascot, the Michelin Man), the event was a competition and an exhibition of new, environmentally friendly fuels and automotive technology. Virtually all of the world's major automakers, component manufacturers and energy suppliers demonstrated their latest products.

Environment-friendly power plants are popping up in Pennsylvania and across the nation as electricity suppliers increasingly invest in new technologies that generate "green" energy. The most popular newfangled power sources are windmill turbines, solar photovoltaic panels, and fuel cells - all of which are virtually nonpolluting and have the potential to power buildings and homes as effectively as traditional coal and nuclear plants. "The market has now spoken," said Nora Mead Brownell, a Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission member.

An Iranian businessman was sentenced Friday to 33 months in prison for conducting illegal transactions with Iran between 2002 and 2005. Mohammad Reza Vaghari, 43, lived in Broomall when he exported banned goods to Iran that could be used for military purposes. Along with sophisticated lab equipment, laptops and fuel cells, Vaghari also shipped less menacing goods, namely "male enhancement" tablets, prosecutors said. Vaghari and a partner, Mir Hossein Ghaemi, who pleaded guilty last year, operated Saamen Co. L.L.C.

Take a Ford Taurus and an Apollo mooncraft and smash them together and just maybe you end up with the automotive holy grail - a car that zips along without polluting. Well, just maybe. The product is a hydrogen-powered car that uses an absolutely non-polluting fuel and an electric motor for power. How clean is a hydrogen car? Clean enough that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley actually drank the exhaust. And unlike an electric car with its cumbersome batteries and limited juice, hydrogen is "a very good energy carrier," according to Brad Bates, manager of the alternative fuels program at the Ford Motor Co. Utilizing space technology, the hydrogen car doesn't rely on combustion.

Confronted with an erratic pressure reading from a tank that helps provide power to the space shuttle, NASA officials yesterday were considering bringing the five Discovery astronauts back home one day earlier than planned. The astronauts turned off some lights and other equipment yesterday while on-ground controllers searched for the cause of the pressure surges in the tank, said Granvil Pennington, one of Discovery's three flight directors. "There's nothing to be concerned about.

Call it retro-futuristic. President Bush's energy policy draws on the past and looks to the future, but skips the present entirely. In the State of the Union, the President called on Congress to pass his "comprehensive" energy package, which heavily subsidizes yesterday's technology - coal, oil and nuclear power. At the same time, he unveiled needed investment in hydrogen fuel cells, the most promising technology for the 21st century. Yet he offered nothing to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil right now. With war looming in Iraq, that's a colossal omission.

Conversation between Mission Control in Houston and the space shuttle Challenger was routine through the first 60 seconds of flight. Following is a transcript of that conversation, interspersed with the simultaneous overview provided by the Mission Control commentator: Commentator: 10-9-8-7-6, we have main engine start, 4-3-2-1, and liftoff. Liftoff of the 25th space shuttle mission. And it has cleared the tower. Mike Smith, pilot: Roll program. Mission Control: Roger, roll, Challenger.