Today I begin professional leave to pursue a moonshot: a paradigm changing concept for hydrogen cooling and liquefaction.  Faculty are eligible for leave every six years, this is my 11th year at WSU and will be my first leave. The purpose of leave is to allow for intense focus and re-training. With many state and federal programs starting to show interest in liquid hydrogen the timing couldn’t be better. With 30 people in the lab and a big move to a new building underway the timing couldn’t be worse. Regardless, we have a very important year ahead.

It is only the second professional leave from … » More …

Enough: as much or as many as required.

Things I’ve had enough of:

Exceptional students,
Support from the upper administration,
Original ideas,
Time and resources to develop those ideas,
Family support.

So when folks tell me I’m, “at the top of the list of people that could be poached by another institution”, I can say I’ve had enough of that too. Things are about as good as they can be. Really! Here’s a few from the past year:

Hydrogen is not just a cool fuel to me these days.
COVID teaching went as good as it could’ve (literally).
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(This is a pre-print of my May ‘Cool. Fuel.’ article for Cold Facts — the magazine of the Cryogenic Society of America.)

Back when I was a Ph.D student at Wisconsin the machine that saved many of my days was a Bridgeport manual end mill conveniently located in the basement of the lab. So when I setup the HYPER lab’s manufacturing space at Washington State I found an old Bridgeport clone to place in our manufacturing area. Yes it’s even older now. While it’s still used some for drilling and tapping operations, a new additive manufacturing project led by Jordan Raymond in my lab is … » More …

I’m all charged up this morning about CHARGE — Washington State University’s (WSU’s) new Consortium for Hydrogen and Renewably Generated Electrofuels.

What is an electrofuel?

A high-value, storable, energy product created from hydrogen generated by renewable means like electricity, wind, or solar power. With no fossil fuel resources in the state, Washington has the potential to use electrofuels to eliminate carbon emissions across multiple sectors:

Why WSU?

A couple of years ago I looked around the country for a center specifically devoted towards hydrogen and electrofuels … » More …

This is a preprint of my February column “Cool Fuel” in Cold Facts Magazine by the Cryogenic Society of America.

In the June issue of ColdFacts (V. 36, No. 3 2020) I talked about how we’re learning to be more flexible while keeping our cool (a nod to the pandemic). The fun take away though was the realization that thin film polymer origami bellows could flex 100’s of times immersed in liquid nitrogen without fracturing – my new favorite liquid nitrogen (LN2) demonstration. But it didn’t last long (as my favorite demo that is) due to Francis Dunne, a new PhD student in … » More …

I’m continually surprised that the HYPER lab remains the only cryogenic hydrogen research lab in US academia. But then again, I find myself continually having to fight for liquid hydrogen, even to hydrogen experts. Hydrogen liquefies at atmospheric pressure only after cooling below 20 K (-420°F), you cannot liquefy hydrogen by increasing pressure. This requirement to make something that cold (a.k.a. cryogenics) is technically challenging. However, in 2012, liquid hydrogen accounted for over 90% of small merchant hydrogen utilization in the US. Yet, only a few legacy companies have the knowledge base necessary to handle liquid hydrogen, and the last academic lab in the US … » More …