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MTSU's Dr. Cliff Ricketts' Hybrid Hydrogen Truck
Dr. Cliff Ricketts, professor of Agricultural Education at Middle Tennessee State University, has a second job. For the past 25 years, Dr. Ricketts has been researching and building alternative fuel vehicles. “This is my passion,” he says. “I’m able to be creative here, since we don’t have an engineering department.” When Dr. Ricketts first started his research, he was building ethanol engines. In 1982, he gave six presentations on the corn-derived fuel at the World’s Fair in Knoxville. From there, Dr. Ricketts moved on to methane engines and is now working on a vehicle powered by the sun and hydrogen from water, which he plans to drive across Tennessee this spring. The vehicle’s source of solar power comes from photovoltaic panels installed by Big Frog Mountain next to MTSU’s Agriculture Education building. The panels store power in the grid line of Murfreesboro Electric Service, which is under the umbrella of TVA. Ricketts says he already has 10,000 kilowatts stored in the grid bank. The solar unit provides enough “fuel” for a 70-mile trip, which Ricketts points out is really enough for 85% of U.S. commuters. However, he wants to prove the ability to drive long distances, which is where hydrogen power comes in. The Nissan truck Dr. Ricketts is using has a hybrid engine that uses hydrogen. The solar unit powers a hydrogen electrolysis unit, which purifies water to prepare it for separation. Once the hydrogen is separated from the oxygen, it goes into a metal hydride tank and solidifies. It then goes through another process of converting to gaseous hydrogen in order to power the truck. The hydrogen allows the truck to travel an additional 70 miles, but Ricketts says with the proper equipment and a lighter vehicle, he can produce and store enough power to travel 300 miles. Select students in the agriculture department at MTSU work with Dr. Ricketts, performing the majority of the mechanical work and installation involved. “It takes a special student to do this,” he says. He points out that few people have the ability to work on a project from concept to production, but Dr. Ricketts has worked with students whose talents have enabled his research to get to the next level. “If I could hire about four of my former students, I would, and I’d put them up against anyone in the world,” he boasts. A lack of funding for things like manpower and equipment is all that’s stopping Dr. Ricketts from his cross-state drive. Tractor Supply Company, headquartered in Nashville, provides Ricketts’ program with $9500 in annual funding, which MTSU matches. “I can buy supplies and do maintenance off the $19,000,” Dr. Ricketts says, “but I can’t buy any equipment with that.” The university’s technology access fee provides a lot of the funding that goes towards equipment. With the right amount of funding, Dr. Ricketts is sure he can prove hydrogen’s pertinence to the automobile industry. He says, “If a professor can pull this off, surely the auto companies can. We put people on the moon, but we have not yet shown the public how to run engines off sun and water.” In the future, Dr. Ricketts would like to purchase a Porsche 914 to build a hybrid that will run at 50-60 mph using the sun and hydrogen. |
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