Rolla Gets First Hydrogen Station

By Porcshe Moran

Missouri is on the road to sustaining hydrogen-powered vehicles with the opening of the state’s first hydrogen refueling station in Rolla. The station opened in August at Missouri University of Science and Technology’s E3 (E-cubed) Commons development. The opening of the station coincided with the nineteen-state Hydrogen Road Tour. The National Hydrogen Association lists sixty-one operational hydrogen fueling stations in the United States, twenty-eight of which are in California.

Missouri S&T started using hydrogen shuttle buses at Rolla and to and from Fort Leonard Wood in 2007. The buses and the opening of the station are part of the university’s Show Me the Road to Hydrogen project, a study of the safe deployment of alternative fuel.

“We are looking to the future at a time when we really need this technology,” says Angela Rolufs, director of the Missouri Transportation Institute and Institute for Environmental Excellence.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Efficiency and Renewable Energy, hydrogen fuel burns cleanly and can be economically competitive with gasoline or diesel. In September, Washington D. C.’s only public hydrogen pump charged $8.18 per kg, and the Toyota Highlander Hybrid FCHV gets eighty miles per kg.

Although there are no privately owned hydrogen cars on the road in Missouri currently, drivers would be permitted to use the fueling station as long as appropriate arrangements were made at the university, says John W. Sheffield, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

The E3 Commons is the site of several planned renewable energy, environmental, and educational initiatives. Missouri S&T was selected as one of seventeen universities to compete in EcoCAR: The Next Challenge. Students participating in the North American contest plan to improve the fuel economy and lower the greenhouse gas emissions of a Saturn VUE by using new technologies and fuels.