STIR

It doesn’t get any greener than hydrogen.

Once cars fuel up with the gas, which is created when solar power splits water into oxygen and hydrogen, the only byproduct is pure H2O.

A Connecticut-based company wants to build a fueling station for hydrogen-powered vehicles somewhere in Richmond within the next two years.

SunHydro plans to build 11 fueling stations along the East Coast. Each self-contained unit will produce hydrogen gas using only solar power and water and will be capable of filling 10 to 15 vehicles a day.

“Having a network of stations is the key to pushing technology forward, therefore we decided to develop infrastructure that will allow automakers to bring these types of cars to the East Coast,” said Michael Grey, president of SunHydro.

The company has a local connection: Tom Sullivan, the founder of Toano-based Lumber Liquidators, founded it. In August, Sullivan purchased Proton Energy of Wallingford, Conn., for $10.2 million. That company developed the technology that SunHydro will use to build the fueling stations, which will stretch from Maine to Miami.

Grey, was at Lumber Liquidators before going to work for Sullivan’s new venture, said each station will cost about $3 million to build. The first is going up in Connecticut, near the company’s headquarters.

According to a recent story in Fortune Magazine, there are currently 64 hydrogen stations, which are owned and operated by energy companies, universities, local governments and transit agencies, with another 38 in the planning and development stages.

Grey said they have looked at a couple of sites in Richmond, but he isn’t ready to say where. The company will develop stations in the Northeast before moving southward, he said.

General Motors, Nissan, Mercedes Benz, Mazda, Honda and Volkswagen are among the companies that have hydrogen-powered vehicles, which are more efficient than gasoline hybrids, on the market or in development.

One of the challenges of using hydrogen is storing it. As a gas, it takes up a lot of space. And as a compressed liquid, it can be more dangerous. However, it’s easy to use to power the batteries of an electric car, according to an engineer at MIT who talked with BizSense.

Most of the activity has been concentrated in California, where a great deal of research and development has already taken place. Bringing the hydrogen movement here requires a leap of faith on the part of SunHydro.

“What comes first, the chicken or the egg?” said Grey. “The auto industry is not going to bring the cars here without fueling stations. Hydrogen is the wave of the future. You’ve really got to have some visionary risk-taking if you want to be a company of the future.”

Because there are no government standards for weights and measures, Grey said the company cannot charge drivers at the station a per unit price. (Hydrogen gas is measured in kilograms.) Instead, Grey said, they plan to make money in the beginning by working deals with automakers whose customers would pay for the fuel as part of their lease or purchase. They would be given a PIN or key card to access the fuel station.

For reference, a lease on a Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen vehicles costs $600 a month.

The stations use a process called water electrolysis. Electrical current is applied to water that has been combined with an electrolyte, such as salt. Proton energy engineer Larry Moulthrop explains what happens next:

“What you saw in your high school chemistry class, you’d see bubbles coming off those electrodes and wires. One set of bubbles is hydrogen gas from the negative electrode, off the positive electrode is oxygen.”

In the SunHydro devices, the oxygen is vented into the atmosphere. The hydrogen is captured and compressed. It is stored in tanks inside the system until a driver arrives to fill up.

The driver inserts a nozzle into the vehicle and the nozzle transmits hydrogen gas, somewhat like at a typical service station, except hydrogen fuel is not liquid.

Inside the vehicle, the hydrogen undergoes a chemical process in which it reacts with air from the atmosphere to produce electricity, which charges the vehicles batteries.

Thirsty motorists could drink the byproduct.