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"You can't have a hydrogen car without some place to refuel it," said Frank Ohlemacher, the facilities manager at Ohio State's Center for Automotive Research. CAR houses the only hydrogen refueling station in Ohio, where it is used in research on alternative transportation technologies.
There are 66 stations in the U.S. and 39 more are in the works, according to the National Hydrogen Association.
CAR Director Giorgio Rizzoni agrees the circular problem exists.
"If the public wanted to use the station, it would be open. But the thing is, how many people do you know who have a hydrogen car?" he said.
This infrastructure shortage does not faze researchers at CAR.
Rizzoni said the creation of the hydrogen station was motivated by research to increase car mileage using alternative fuels.
"The refueling station really gives us the opportunity to do a lot of things that we couldn't have done without," he said.
Ohlemacher built the hydrogen station two years ago using Praxair pressurized tanks and CAR is already looking at more ways to address rising gasoline prices.
"We may be able to also produce hydrogen from solar power," Rizzoni said.
"Right now there are a lot of companies that are doing a lot of research on fuel cell stacks, and there are different gases and different ways of actually capturing that electron in that conversion process," Ohlemacher said.
Ohlemacher argues for continued research in spite of the obstacles.
"The answer might not necessarily be hydrogen. It may be methane; it might be something else in that family," he said.
Biofuels present their own unique problems.
Referring to a 2005 Chevrolet Equinox parked in CAR's garage that was converted into a hybrid using soy biodiesel, Ohlemacher said biofuels and ethanol are cheap because they are subsidized by the federal government, but there is not enough acreage to displace the millions of barrels of oil we use every day.
Frederick Michel, an associate professor in food, agriculture and biological engineering, partly disagrees. In a phone interview, Michel said it is true there is a blender's credit for making ethanol, but he pointed out that oil companies receive their own subsidies and the associated costs with keeping shipping lanes open increase the price per barrel.
"You hear a lot of this stuff about how ethanol will increase food prices," Michel said. "Transportation costs contribute more to cost of the food than the prices of the corn going up."
Michel participated in the U.S. Department of Energy's 2005 - 2006 National Renewable Energy Laboratory research. He acknowledged biofuels cannot replace current demand.
"Basically, the conclusion was you could displace 30 percent," he said, speaking of a study conducted by the DOE.
But concerns about oil supplies will not go away. The U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a study in 2007 that calls for a peak oil strategy.
"(T)he United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be particularly vulnerable," the study states.
"You gotta start somewhere," Ohlemacher said. "Research just feeds off of research and ideas and technology and everything else. If you don't put your first foot forward you don't go anywhere."
Lesly Hernandez can be reached at hernandez.171@osu.edu.
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