Behind the driver’s seat of a hydrogen-powered race kart sits the fuel cell, a block of machinery that makes the whole thing go.
Just 11 days before competing in an international kart race, the UCLA team still had not received its fuel cell in the mail.
The stress was huge for members of HercUCLAs, a group of more than 30 UCLA students and faculty advisers who designed, built and raced a hydrogen fuel cell kart last August in the first ever Formula Zero competition in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Held up in months of legal and safety negotiations, the fuel cell finally arrived at UCLA with 10 days to go. HercUCLAs’ members, who had only been able to practice with substitutes, began a mad dash to recalculate and recalibrate to a real fuel cell.
“Basically, the last week before the competition, no one slept,” said Ioannis Manousiouthakis, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student.
The following week in Rotterdam, HercUCLAs placed fifth among of the world’s top six teams, beating the only other American group. HercUCLAs’ five rivals had all received their fuel cells half a year before the race.
“I guess for the time we had, we did a pretty good job,” said Giacomo Po, the team’s electronics lead.
Now armed with more time, HercUCLAs is back at work in the lab in Engineering V. The group, named after UCLA’s Hydrogen Engineering Research Consortium and the Greek god Hercules, is preparing for its next race in London this May.
The student members have decided to revamp the design of their kart, which can reach 60 mph while sitting inches off the ground, resembling a go-kart.
Within the hydrogen fuel cell, a series of metals and membranes meet with hydrogen atoms and strip them of their electrons, which then power an electrical motor, propelling the kart.
After doing their work, the electrons reunite with hydrogen and a new player, oxygen from outside air, forming the only by-product: water.
Though there are some skeptics, the hydrogen fuel cell model is a top candidate to replace the standard internal combustion engine, which draws on environmentally hazardous sources such as petroleum.
Vasilios Manousiouthakis, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and a HercUCLAs faculty advisor, said the zero-emission nature of hydrogen fuel cells provides a strategy against global warming and unhealthy air quality in places like California.
While Manousiouthakis acknowledges that the current process of converting hydrogen into usable fuel requires the use of fossil fuels, he said that it is still much more efficient than the current gasoline model. He added that hydrogen that is obtained from renewable resources such as solar power would cut environmental concerns to near zero.
The acquisition of hydrogen would be an impediment “neither in the short term nor the long term,” he said. “In fact, it would be a major advantage.”
Fans of the environment, cars, and engineering, many of the students in HercUCLAs devote a lot of themselves to the project.
Fernando Olmos, a fifth-year chemical engineering student, said he spent thousands of dollars on racing classes and lost 75 pounds to get the job of team driver.
“I did it by myself,” Olmos said. “I wanted to become the driver. I knew there were competitions and other guys wanted to do it, so I knew I had to lose weight and I had to practice a lot.”
Casper Wypych, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, is in charge of the mechanics and welding of the kart’s chassis.
Wypych said HercUCLAs’ efforts could have larger effects on the state of hydrogen fuel cell technology.
“Everything that leads to racing trickles down and eventually finds its way to regular automotives,” Wypych said. “By being in racing, … we’re ahead of everything that’s going on.”
Robert Shaefer, a HercUCLAs faculty advisor, said the significance of the kart’s hydrogen-powered engine motivated him to join the team.
“I wanted the UCLA students to have access and practice and training on the top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art … future technology,” Shaefer said. “It’s not right that we only focus on (internal) combustion engines.”
Professor Manousiouthakis said donations and sponsorships of any size are crucial to HercUCLAs’ survival and can be made at herc.ucla.edu/giving.
The travel and shipping costs alone for the group’s next race in London will total approximately $20,000, Po said. Keeping UCLA at the front of the pack both technologically and environmentally is no cheap ticket.