Page 6 University Daily Kansan, June 19, 1980
Hydrogen-powered buses like the one above in Riverside, Calif., are part of an experiment to test the potential for hydrogen use in the future. Some researchers say hydrogen could reduce the demand for oil in as little as five years.
Hoffman named acting dean
Robert S. Hoffman, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will become acting dean July 1 when the current dean, Robert Cobb, becomes executive vice chancellor for the Lawrence campus.
Deanell Tacha, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, said
yesterday that Hoffman will serve as acting dean until a new dean is chosen
The new dean will be chosen next year between January and July Tacha said.
Hoffman, professor of systematics and ecology and curator of mammals at the Museum of Natural History, has been the associate dean of the College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences since November 1978.
"I know he will provide active leadership," Tacha said. "He has a thorough knowledge of the affairs of the College and will bring great talent and energy to the College." Tacha said he would be all the responsibility of a permanent dean would have.
Official says hydrogen may replace oil as fuel
By WALTER THORP
Staff Reporter
INDEPENDENCE, Mo.-Hydrogen, the earth's cleanest and most abundant element, may replace oil as America's chief energy source within five years, a Billings Energy Corporation spokesman said this week.
Jim Dangerfield, president of the Hydrogen Organization said that with technology developed by Billings, internal combustion engines could run safely, efficiently and economically on hydrogen than on gasoline.
The Hydrogen organization is the non-profit informational arm of the multi-million dollar Billings Corporation.
Billings Corporation is the world's top hydrogen research corporation. Their most recent accomplishment was finding a way to eliminate the hydrogen bubble in the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor.
"We have the technology to begin converting private automobiles to run on hydrogen fuel," Dangerfield said. "We need now is a supply of hydrogen."
TO SOLVE this problem, Dangerfield said, the company is planning construction of a hydrogen-from-coral gasification plant. The plant, located near Forest City, Iowa, will be completed within five years.
The company also plans to conduct extensive nationwide road tests to prove that hydrogen power is competitive with gasoline. Billings has a fleet of 15 to 20 hydrogen-powered postal service jeeps over the next three years.
Twenty privately-owned automobiles also will be converted this year for road tests and a hydrogen-powered V-8 engine will be run nonstop on the next year to study the long-term effects on the engine.
The company also has converted 14 buses to run on hydrogen for companies in Powo and Orem, Utah.
ENGINES POWERED only by hydrogen would last as long as 300,000 miles before they required major overhail because the gas is not corrosive to the engine, Dangerfield said.
He said that tests completed at Billings had proven that hydrogen-powered automobiles are pollution free.
"When hydrogen is burned, the only by-product is water vapor," Dangerfield said. "Our tests have determined that the air coming out of the exhaust of oxygen-fuelled car is actually cleaner than the air coming into the intake."
Hydrogen power is also more efficient than any currently-used energy method, he said. Hydrogen use from a storage tank in an automobile is 100 percent efficient while batteries are only 10%. Efficiency in their use depends on electricity. Efficiency comparison of energy input versus energy output.
Billings had developed electrolysis and hydrogen-from-coal gasification techniques that were 80 percent efficient as compared with current petroleum processes that were only 60 percent efficient," he said.
APPROXIMATELY 2.2 pounds of hydrogen equals one gallon of gasoline, but hydrogen burns 40 percent more efficiently, Dangerfield said, and 2.2 pounds of Hydrogen can be produced and sold to the consumer for 80 cents.
Roger Billings, the corporation's 32-year-old president, said a Mate Monte Carlo vessel was converted to hydrogen and received the equivalent of 22 mpg after
Billings got his idea to develop hydrogen power while in high school.
As a science project, he converted his father's lawnmower to use liquid hydrogen and found that it worked.
Hydrogen power is an old idea, he said, but only recent technology has made the gas safe to handle and transport.
Billings Energy Corporation developed a system they call hydride storage.
"With the hydride system, we found that if you alloy certain metals together—specifically iron and nickel—form forms an affinity for hydrogen.
"As you put hydrogen in a vessel with these hydrides, the iron and titanium soak up the hydrogen like a sponge."
TO RELEASE the hydrogen.
Dangerfield said, add heat from the engine block.
Years of testing has proven hydride safety Dangerfield said.
"The company has done everything from building bonfires under hydride tanks to firing incendiary bullets into them to prove their safety," he said.
The ultimate aim of the corporation is to develop a marketable hydrogen-powered car. Until then, Dangerfield said, the company would educate the public about the hydrogen power. They also would market easy-to-install universal conversion kits.
Although the kits are not yet available, he said, they would cost about $1.600.
"We don't want to be a hydrogen auto manufacturer." Dangerfield so'd. "We would like to license our technolo-tech to the facilities and capital to build cars."
HYDROGEN POWER would not put the oil companies or the automobile manufacturers out of business, he said, but it would break the oil monopoly.
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