Alan Farnham

Alan Farnham

4/25/2005 @ 12:00AM


Back to Hydrogen Gas

The long, loud history of hydrogen as a motor fuel.

To hear ecotopians talk, you’d think the idea of running an engine on hydrogen was new. It’s not. Dirigible skippers of the last century did it regularly-though sometimes not more than once.

In 1911 American airship pioneer Melvin Vaniman built the Akron, a hydrogen-filled, Goodyear Blimp-size craft in which he and his crew intended to be the first to fly across the Atlantic. Among its many innovations were engines that could, with the throw of a lever, be run either off gasoline or off hydrogen inhaled straight from the gasbag.

The idea was this: If after burning a quantity of heavy gasoline the airship became light, the skipper had only to switch to hydrogen, thus reducing lift. Vaniman, says Penn State Abington College aviation archaeologist P.J. Capelotti, “was 50 years ahead of his time. It’s just too bad he hadn’t invented the backfire flame arrestor.”

A crowd of thousands massed at Atlantic City to see the Akron off. As it rose majestically, Vaniman could be seen waving enthusiastically-a tiny figure, growing smaller. The ship’s engines momentarily went silent, an indication he was switching over from gasoline to gas. There followed a deafening report and a fireball whose brilliance left little doubt the trip was off.

German skippers fared better, in part because they diluted hydrogen with less explosive gases. This technique found its apotheosis in 1928′s Graf Zeppelin, which was kept aloft by the gas in a row of 16 cylindrical cells of fabric that collectively displaced 3.7 million cubic feet. The top two-thirds of each cell held hydrogen, for lift; the bottom third held Blaugas (German for “blue gas”)-a mixture of hydrogen and other hydrocarbon gases, used as fuel. Blaugas was relatively safe, and it weighed the same as air, meaning that consumption of it rendered the Graf neither heavier nor lighter.

Running mostly on Blaugas, occasionally on gasoline, the airship circled the Earth in 1929, stopping only twice to refuel-the first transit of the globe by a passenger aircraft. Ten years, 590 flights (including 144 ocean crossings), 13,110 passengers and more than a million miles later, the Graf retired, having set an enviable safety record.

Back to Hydrogen Gas

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