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This summer, Shailesh Shrestha ’11 (Pokhara, Nepal), who is pursuing a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering and an A.B. degree with a computer science major, is working as an EXCEL scholar with William Hornfeck, professor of electrical and computer engineering, to build a car that runs solely on hydrogen extracted from water.
Hailing from the third-world country of Nepal where shortages of petroleum and other energy supplies are frequent, I was more than accustomed to sky-high energy prices. But never had I imagined being involved in some research that could one day not only help to mitigate the problem of limited availability of energy resources, but also significantly contribute to normalizing the rapidly changing climate caused by global warming.
This rare opportunity to work first hand on important issues related to the global economy and environment conservation was provided to me by Lafayette’s EXCEL program. The program sets a platform for energetic students to closely link up with the faculty and get valuable research experience in various fields.
In this project, we are trying to figure out if we can run light utility vehicles like small golf carts on a completely green energy supply. By completely green, it implies the energy has to come from a source that does not have any carbon footprint.
For our project, we decided to use hydrogen, which is the most abundant element in the universe, as the fuel for our car. However, unlike traditional hydrogen that comes from reforming hydrocarbons and has a lot of carbon dioxide emission, we have set out to derive this hydrogen from water. Our strategy is to disassociate water in hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight by the means of solar cells, use that hydrogen in a fuel cell to burn with oxygen, and extract electricity to drive the electric motor to run the car.
The most important aspect of this kind of drive system is that the car will be a zero-emission vehicle throughout. The only by-product, which is water, can be recycled further to provide hydrogen. It is this possibility of being able to drive a small car without having to fill it up with extremely pricy gasoline and without emitting any harmful carbon dioxide that has provided motivation for us to keep on trying to come up with the goods on this project.
Everyone who is concerned about the changing environment knows that some credible effort has to be initiated so as to avoid future catastrophes. Not only is this project aimed toward building a gasoline-free sustainable transportation system at a small scale, but it is also directed toward the future. We are trying to keep in step with the very commendable “going green” philosophy adopted by Lafayette and hopefully, this research on finding alternative energy sources to assist our way of life will be instrumental to boost the dwindling environment and the economy alike.