Washington State University (WSU) students recently won a hydrogen fueling station design contest. The challenge was to create an H2 fueling station that was low cost to build and maintain, portable and could be used in real world conditions right now.
According to WSU News, “The competition called for students to create a fueling station that would be low cost, easy to permit, low maintenance, transportable and readily mass produced. It needed to gas up a vehicle with five kilograms of hydrogen fuel in less than five minutes – enough for a car to travel 300 miles or equivalent to what current gas stations provide.
“The WSU team’s fueling station design was safe and reliable while also lowering building costs of current stations by 75 percent … They developed a business plan in which a portable hydrogen fuel station could work in conjunction with existing gas stations in a way that would benefit both entities.”
The students competed with teams from North and South America, Europe and Asia. The award was announced recently at the 2014 Alternative Clean Transportation exposition in Long Beach, California.