Bangalore: ISRO and Tata Motors Initiate First Hydrogen Bus

Times of India

Bangalore, Nov 23: If everything goes according to plan, guests at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi would be travelling from the games venue to the games village and back on pollutionfree hydrogen buses! This green initiative of ISRO and Tata Motors will see the country’s first hydrogen bus. Work has already started on the project and the prototype is expected to be ready by December 2008. 

The bus will not run on an engine, but on electric power produced out of a mix of hydrogen and oxygen. It will use hydrogen fuel cell technology as against combustion technology which burns gasoline. The bus will emit nothing but a cloud of water vapour.

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Tata Motors will get the frame and chassis ready while ISRO will provide the fuel technology. The first bus will be a 60-seater proto-model, ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum that opened here on Thursday. 

The bus will roughly cost Rs 80 lakh with per kg of hydrogen gas that will run it costing around Rs 120 per kg or more. A 40-kg cylinder will allow the bus to run 560 km, ie, an entire day for a typical metro bus. “In the short run it may be costly. We are working on a bus now because that will be more economical than a car as it would hold 60 people. In Phase II we will come out with a car with lower cost of hydrogen gas,’’ architect of the bus, V Vnanagandhi, programme director, SAC, ISRO, Ahmedabad, told TOI. 

“In fuel cell technology (buses that run on cells that store hydrogen in the form of fuel), hydrogen energy is reacted with oxygen to produce water and electricity. The electricity produced will be used to run an electric motor that will ultimately run the bus,” Vnanagandhi explained. 

Nair said: “How much ever we try with conventional engines we are unable to control pollution, but this technology will help do that.’’ 

Currently automotive giants like General Motors, BMW, Ford, Honda, Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz have hydrogen proto-models in the world.
  
Green bus

• Bus will run on hydrogen
• Will emit water vapour and not noxious gases
• Hydrogen will eliminate use of carbon-based fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide emissions
• Hydrogen will be an alternative to dwindling supplies of petroleum