Hydrogen Road Tour in Chattanooga

Monday two of my students (Shuguang Ji and Casey Langford) and I went to the Hydrogen Road Tour in Chattanooga (http://hydrogenroadtour08.dot.gov/). For a couple of hours about a half dozen hydrogen powered cars (internal combustion and fuel cell) were displayed and demonstrated. It was quite an impressive demo, if you could ignore the tractor trailers with giant hydrogen tanks that accompanied them. This certainly demonstrates the chicken or egg challenge associated with developing cars first or hydrogen infrastructure. Not every H2 car can have a "station" following them wherever they go. Regardless, the vehicles were silent and local pollution free. It was also interesting seeing the different technology strategies involved, like the hydrogen gas powered fuel cell cars, with high pressure tanks, and BMW's internal combustion engine with very cool liquid hydrogen. The engineer told me the tank is so insulated that it would take 80 days for a cup of boiling coffee to become drinkable inside. Pretty amazing. At any rate, the reason I attended was to brush up on some of the technology, along with infrastructure challenges for a research project I am working on with Casey, along with Wayne Davis here in the Civil Engineering department. We are identifying infrastructure and fleet challenges associated with developing a hydrogen powered bus fleet in Knoxville. On a semi-related note, I've seen a few stories about using baking soda/water mixture that can supposedly boost fuel efficiency by 10-100%. I have been thinking about trying it out on my new moster truck (what do I have to lose?). I came across this PM article that tests it and so far has debunked it as a myth that violates thermodynamic laws.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4276846.html?series=19

If I decide to go for it, it might be a fun experiment.