We pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot in Phoenix at 1:00 A.M. It was 95 degrees and they were piping 80’s house music into the parking lot. Normally, I thoroughly enjoy my dose of Aqua, but on this occasion it seemed as if everything good had forsaken this heat-stricken city. Why on Earth would anyone want to live in the middle of the desert, I wondered? I couldn’t figure it out. Then it hit me, quite literally; air conditioning! Mitch and I had had enough of wondering through the all-night Wal-Mart and found the Bus a motel to stay in. With temperatures back below triple digits, we fell blissfully asleep.

The next morning we woke from our frosty hibernation and high-tailed it across town to a gathering at Sara Van Houten '91’s house with her husband, kids, and Frank Long '77’s family. It was at this point that I realized that life in Phoenix consisted of an endless sprint from air-conditioned area to air-conditioned area. They say it’s a dry heat, but they somehow fail to mention the fact that a dry heat of 100,000 degrees will leave you soaking and dehydrated. But I digress again. Frank grilled us approximately 5 lbs. of meat a person and Sarah fed us a full three courses... of dessert. We were stuffed. On top of all that generosity, we got to play with Austin ’30 (Frank’s kid) and the three Van Houten kids; Soren, Katie, and Stella. Suffice to say, we left fat, happy, and worn out.

Early the next morning we headed over to Future Fuels (Advanced Pilot Program) at Advanced Power Systems in Phoenix, the first commercial fueling location in the country for hydrogen, compressed natural gas (CNG), and the only place in the world where you can also get variable blends of both fuels. At 8 A.M. it was already the temperature of Mercury (the planet, not the element…though the heat was that toxic) at the outdoor plant. Garrett Beauregard, director of engineering for the project, gave us a tour of the production facilities, where they purify and compress natural gas as well as produce 18 gallons gasoline equivalent (GGE) of pure hydrogen a day, from only water and electricity. In fact, to produce that one hydrogen GGE, it takes only 2.47 gallons of city water (but lots of electricity). The facility has been up and running since 2002 and this fall it will become fully commercial and independent of the Department of Energy. An advanced montoring system in place at the facility for government auditing will no doubt be a business asset for APS.

All this is very exciting for the future of hydrogen fuel, but unfortunately it has a long way to go to be fully commercially viable. The Future Fuels project uses a tank the size of the Bus (~30 feet long, 8 feet wide), but each day produces only enough fuel to power one car for one long day, not to mention the fact that it eats up electricity produced from the burning of fossil fuels. However, Future Fuels hydrogen only runs about $2.51 GGE, so who knows, if they make the process more efficient, it could be a true fuel of the future.

- Zabel