When’s the last time you ordered up some hydrogen?
The team behind Turner Motor Company did just that in advance of this week’s InventOR finals. But despite the potential red flags that might have sent up for school administrators, it was all in service of a noble goal.
“Turner Motor Company seeks to solve the biggest problem of the 21st century: climate change,” says team lead Blake Turner. “We must take decisive action as a global community by the end of the century, or the world as we know it will suffer irreversible damage. While great progress is being made on electrical generation, there is a lingering problem that has yet to be resolved, transportation.”
While electric vehicles offer one solution to the problem, Team Turner sees it as an imperfect one with sluggish adoption rates and expensive batteries.
“Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles offer a better solution, overcoming some of the drawbacks of electric vehicles,” Turner says.
Which is why Turner Motor Company has come up with a device that can convert a regular, old gas-burning engine into one that burns hydrogen. The result is a problem-solving two-fer.
“First, when a combustion engine burns hydrogen, it creates no greenhouse gasses, the only chemical coming out of the tailpipe is water vapor,” explains Turner.
Pretty clean, right?
And, because anyone who uses the device can switch back and forth from a hydrogen-burning to conventional engine, you don’t have the expense of buying a new vehicle or the worry of being stranded somewhere without a spare tank of hydrogen.
Want to learn more? Meet Turner Motor Company in Klamath this Friday!