Ralph Rockow Visits the BB2

Ralph Rockow, the founder and president of Exodyne Inc., stopped by the shop last week, and was able to see a load test of the BB2's fuel cells. He has been a long time supporter of the program, going back as long as I can remember (and as long as I have been on the team). We wanted to share this picture of Dave thanking Ralph for his support of the BB2. Thanks to Ralph and all of our supporters and sponsors!

Is It Hot Hot Hot or Cold?

OK, so news like this is always deserving of a post, so I wanted to get this up tonight. We made a test run 7pm tonight to test that the hydrogen was being regulated to the correct pressure, and now the cells are running very reliably at high current.

A special thanks to Ballard: Using their very valuable feedback, and newly acquired data from our bench test setup, we were able to correctly calibrate the hydrogen supply to the fuel cells. Horray for teamwork!

After making the changes, at 10pm tonight we pulled roughly 520kW (700 horsepower) from the fuel cell stacks for about 1 second after ramping and holding 400kW, then 450kW without any problems, for a total test length of 50 seconds. Everything was running great, but we ran out of hydrogen fuel, and we can't run without that. Needless to say, the resistors do heat up a bit:

High Performance Computing and the BB2

Our computing sponsor (The Ohio Supercomputer Center), through whom we do all of our aerodynamic simulations, has posted some videos that were shot by them with our team out on the salt flats this summer. This is some of the same footage that was used by WOSU to produce an imix segment for the Big Ten Network. This time, the videos are a bit more aimed towards a super-computing audience (you can take that both ways). Some of the BB2 Videos:

• Our Advisor, Giorgio Rizzoni: Applying the power of supercomputing to the challenges of industry
• Kevin Ponziani: Demonstrating the BB2 machine
• Kim Stevens: Achieving stability and low resistance through computational fluid dynamics
  
• Our Ford Partners: Fostering industrial partnerships for cutting-edge fuel cell research (Featuring the Project Leader for the Ford Hydrogen 999)
  

(See more videos at the OSC Video site)

Ford Fusion 999 in Popular Mechanics Article

The December 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics features an article on the Ford Fusion 999.


Ford is one of our biggest sponsors and continues to support us in our endeavor with the Buckeye Bullet 2. A lot of the topics covered in the article apply to both of our cars since we truly partnered up to make both vehicles function as best as possible. We are also mentioned in the beginning of the article:

"By building better race cars, automakers are ultimately able to deliver better production cars. So, in 2005, when students at the Ohio State University Center for Automotive Research approached Ford Motor Company about collaborating on a hydrogen fuel cell car capable of setting a land speed record, the automaker jumped at the opportunity. Just months before, the same group of innovative OSU scholars set a land speed record (315 mph) for electric cars. The Ford/Buckeye hydrogen fuel cell collaboration, the 999 Hydrogen Fusion, was unveiled this past July."

-Popular Mechanics, December 2007

(You can see the article where they broke the 200mph barrier for fuel cell cars here)

Ballard Does a Stack Change

OK, so the change of our fuel cell stacks was actually last week, but we wanted to show you how fast Ballard is at making the change. With help from Ricardo, Mike, Paul, and Becki from Ballard, the stacks were changed out in 2 minutes (well, that's the length of the time lapse video, it may have actually been a few hours...) Either way, the change went quite well, and we are currently getting ready for testing this coming weekend. More to come on that later...