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Hydrogen and Cryogenics Cool. Fuel.

HYPER Headlines

  • What our alumni say

    The WSU Media team recently became the first outside group allowed to shoot onsite in Blue Origin’s 20 year history. HYPER alumni had a few important things to say. Check out the first highlight video and the following three individual alumni feature videos for Jordan Raymond, Ron Bliesner, and Chelsea Crabb. You’ll find out why they chose to study the coolest fuel in the universe (hydrogen) at HYPER and why you should too!

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  • Testimony to the WA Senate

    I had the wonderful opportunity to present to the WA Senate Transportation sub committee on hydrogen technologies today. The link below includes a ~20 minute video that is a nice primer to what we do and why:

    Senate briefed on WSU hydrogen vehicle technology research

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  • Project Mobius — Spokane’s Hydrogen Future

    Please, allow the students from the Washington Innovation for Sustainable Energy (WISE) club to present Project Mobius, a hydrogen power-to-gas system for Spokane’s Riverfront Park. The project is the club’s submission for the 2017-2018 Hydrogen Education Foundation contest “Designing a power-to-gas system“:
    The team members include: Mathew Hunt, Lee Taylor, Ryan Hamilton, Timothy Eckhart, Ashley Mills, Chloe Nichol, Austin Anderson, Austin Dowell, Joseph Ostheller, Nicholas Potter, and Spencer Seeberger. The team was advised by Ian Richardson and Jake Leachman. External project stakeholders that provided advise on the project include Steve Wenke at Avista Corporation, Gary Higgenbottom from ITM-Power, William Fuglevand at Plug Power, …

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  • An AWESOME start to 2018 for HYPER lab grads

    It’s been a special week for three HYPER lab grads.

    Patrick Adam (Ph.D. ’17) , Ian Richardson (Ph.D. ’17), and Eli Shoemake (M.S. pending), co-founders of the startup company Protium Innovations LLC, were notified that they’ve won a Small business Technology TRansfer (STTR) award from the National Science Foundation for their 3-D printed liquid hydrogen tank technology. The award announcement can be found here. The Phase 1 award is for $225,000 for the first year, after which they can apply for a phase 2, multi-year award.

    This same week, Ian Richardson was notified that he will be awarded a 3 year <a ... » More …

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  • Titan seas recreated in HYPER lab

    HYPER lab member Ian Richardson recently finished recreating the methane-ethane-nitrogen seas on Saturn’s moon Titan. Titan, the second largest moon in the solar system, is the only other body besides Earth known to have liquid seas or oceans on it’s surface. For scale, Titan is about half the diameter of Earth — Titanic! A recent picture from Cassini and corresponding article from space.com highlight the chances for new forms of life existing on Titan.

    Ian worked with Jason Hartwig at NASA-Glenn as part of his NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship to create the conditions necessary to … » More …

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  • Giving Tuesday 2nd Update!

    We’ve got just 5 hours left on our Giving Tuesday campaign. You can follow along live here: https://cougsgive.wsu.edu/giving-day/616/department/905

    As of 6:45 the official total we’ve raised is $5,900!! I’m so humbled by the community support of our lab and students! Thank you very, very much!

    What this number doesn’t show is the $5,000 in match pledged by the Hesterbergs. Their support of student education in clean energy is heart warming.

    I also was just informed by an incredible organization that they are arranging the donation of a large hydrogen electrolyzer for the project. These can easily cost up to $30,000! This will be a key addition … » More …

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  • Giving Tuesday Update!

    Hi Everyone,

    We’re about 4 hours into our Giving Tuesday crowdfunding campaign. We’re currently in 3rd place in the University with nearly $600 from 10 gifts, that will be matched up to $5k by Tim and Beverly Hesterberg. A huge THANKS to those that have already pledged support for the students!

    For those of you not following along on Twitter, here’s a transcript of the fun tweets the lab came up with:

    Good Morning, please, allow me to introduce our #H2Flo #WSU #GivingTuesday crowd-funding effort: https://cougsgive.wsu.edu/giving-day/616/department/905 #GoCougs

    THE NEED FOR #H2flo: Wide-spread use of #FCEV and the #hydrogen economy is the refueling infrastructure. No stations … » More …

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  • Video link to my “The HOW of a Hydrogen Organized World” talk

    I had the honor of giving the Charles Lindburgh Lecture in Mechanical Engineering at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, last Thursday. The talk was recorded and the video can be watched here: The HOW of a Hydrogen Organized World.

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  • Leachmans win Best Poster Award at ASEE Conference

    WSU Engineering Librarian Chelsea Leachman and I wrote a paper for the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference in New Orleans titled, “Modification of the House of Quality to Assess Information Gaps during Quality Function Deployment of Engineering Design.” The paper discusses how we modified a common engineering design tool to naturally facilitate the literature review process. We subsequently tested the technique in my Systems Design class.

    It was announced earlier today that the poster we submitted (shown below) won the Best Poster Award for the Engineering Librarys Division (ELD) of the ASEE conference. We’re now up to three most outstanding poster awards, including … » More …

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  • Patrick Adam wins Best Poster Award at 2016 JCATI Symposium

    HYPER lab member Patrick Adam won the Best Poster Award at the 2016 JCATI Symposium. His poster discussed 3-D printing of liquid hydrogen fuel tanks in collaboration with Insitu. Congratulations Patrick!

    Patrick Adam JCATI Poster

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Heisenberg Vortex

One of the greatest issues in developing a sustainable hydrogen economy is the issue of infrastructure. This project found that tube geometry can help cool gases, requiring less energy to keep fuel at cryogenic temperatures.

 

3D Printed Liquid Hydrogen Storage Tank

The current state-of-the-art in liquid cryogen storage technology is the vacuum jacketed dewar with multi-layer insulation (MLI) in between the inner and outer shells to slow the rate of radiation heat transfer.

 

Genii

The first liquid hydrogen fueled drone by a University. Fourteen flights proved the airframe, electric propulsion, and guidance systems were working beautifully, and extensive ground testing and characterization of the hydrogen systems showed the fuel cell hydrogen powertrain was up to the task.