More About Dr. Norton
Grant Norton envisions a day when filling up at the fuel pump will be a thing of the past. It’s a vision that relies on hydrogen gas, a potentially clean, alternative fuel that currently eludes our tanks, primarily because there are no reasonable mechanisms for storing the highly explosive gas.
There are prototype fuel cell cars that run on hydrogen, Dr. Norton says, but currently there is no commercial product. “Buses in Vancouver, B.C., and in Chicago and other cities have hydrogen fuel cells with a great big tank, and that’s fine because it’s a different kind of design,” he says. These busses, which typically move at 20 miles per hour, don’t reach the same levels of performance we expect from cars.
“You don’t want to have a massive cylinder on the top of your car; it’s neither appealing nor aerodynamic,” he notes, adding that all the performance features of gasoline cars would need to be maintained in a hydrogen vehicle. “No one’s going to give that up,” he adds.
Cost is also a factor, and there is the issue of safety. “Hydrogen is a highly explosive gas… if you’ve got people driving around with tanks of hydrogen on their cars and they have a smash, it’s not just bent bits of metal… it’s a dramatic explosion.”
Yet recently, Dr. Norton and his colleagues came closer to realizing a fuel tank that could safely store hydrogen. Their patent-pending nanospring technology could have various applications, including hydrogen fuel storage.
“Basically, the car would look exactly the same as a regular car, but in the fuel tank, rather than an empty volume to fill up with gasoline, there would actually be walls or panels that would be coated with these nanostructures,” he says. These nanostructures, comprised of particles as small as one billionth of a meter in size, are constructed by stacking matter at the atomic level to create systems that have novel properties.
In this case, in an atmosphere of hydrogen, the hydrogen attaches at room temperature to the surface of the nanomaterials and is released when the driver presses the gas pedal. That action heats the gas to about 100 degrees, allowing the hydrogen to come off so it can be burned in the fuel cell, delivering the energy. “The material appears to be outstanding for its ability to have hydrogen molecules attach to the surface,” he adds.
Even with this discovery, don’t expect to see a hydrogen fuel tank in the immediate future. “It’s not going to be next year—probably not even ten years—that you’ll be driving a hydrogen car,” Dr. Norton says.
Until matters of basic science become high public priority, leading to informed public discourse, he believes public policy will likely remain slow to change. “If you are going to have any major change in the energy program you need to have the public on board. Otherwise the legislature, which works in two- and four-year increments, isn’t going to do anything dramatic... But, if the public is behind it, you can introduce a major type of approach, so that’s where our group is coming from… we are addressing the issue from multiple angles,” he adds.
During the past academic year, Dr. Norton organized an energy retreat that brought together more than 80 WSU researchers who are in a variety of disciplines to solve this problem. “There’s so much going on at WSU and we’re trying to bring people together to make this more of a coordinated, focused effort,” he says.
Even with heightened public involvement, hydrogen is only potentially clean because it is a carrier of energy produced by some other means (i.e., it relies on fossil fuel, nuclear, or solar energy as a catalyst.) Solar, of course would be the perfect source.
“The U.S. Department of Energy is looking at making hydrogen from solar energy… but we’re even further from that than where we are with the storage part. Part of it is just looking at making hydrogen, period,” Dr. Norton says.
With an interdisciplinary group of colleagues he is also investigating extraction of hydrogen from coal, which is abundant in the United States. But, coal is dirty, so extracting the hydrogen is much more difficult than getting it from natural gas, he notes. Other researchers on campus, like Jim Hurst in the chemistry department, focus on using solar energy for hydrogen production. “If you can integrate solar with hydrogen, then you’ve got the complete package… the holy grail of energy,” he says.
Dr. Norton is the Herman and Brita Lindholm Endowed Chair and professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Programs in the College of Engineering and Architecture. From 2000-2005 he was chair of WSU’s Materials Science program. He obtained his Ph.D. from Imperial College in London and spent two years at Cornell University before joining Washington State University in 1991. He has also held positions as a visiting professor at Oxford University and a faculty associate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Dr Norton has published more than 160 research articles and two books, one on X-ray diffraction and one on ceramic materials. He belongs to several professional societies and is the editor of Journal of Materials Science. He helped to organize the International Conference on Materials for Advanced Technologies in Singapore in 2005. He is on the organizing committee for the International Symposium on Reactivity of Solids in Minneapolis in 2007, which has a focus on materials for alternative energy applications. During 2007 he will be active as co-organizer of the Materials Research Society Forum on Materials Science and Engineering Education for 2020 and as co-chair for the symposium on Education in Nanoscience and Nanoengineering at the International Conference on Materials for Advanced Technologies in Singapore. He has received awards for outstanding teaching from Materials Science and Engineering in 1994 and 1997, from the College of Engineering and Architecture in 1994, and he received the ASEE Outstanding Teaching Award for the Pacific Northwest region in 1996. He was also presented with a best paper award, Materials Division of the American Society for Engineering Education in 2002.
Lecture Details
View lecture on TVW Windows Media Player format
Download Dr. Hunt's powerpoint presentation (12 MB)
More About Dr. Norton
Research Specialties and Recent Publications
News Releases
Researchers Determine Star Material of Idaho State Gem
Student Helps Assure Sure Diamonds Stay Forever
Other Resources
Heading using the h3tag
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.