Making Hydrogen the Next Major Fuel Source for Soldiers
Researchers from the Naval Research Laboratory are collaborating with other DOD agencies to make hydrogen the next major fuel source for our warfighters. The team has developed a new hydrogen fuel cell that is being used to power the Stalker UAS. Watch this video to learn more.
Transcript
00:00:06 Did you know that hydrogen may be the next major fuel source for our warfighters? Researchers from the Naval Research Laboratory are collaborating with other DOD agencies to make that a reality. Rick Stroman leads a team at NRL that developed a new hydrogen fuel cell that is being used to power the Stalker UAS. So a hydrogen fuel cell is a device that takes hydrogen fuel and air from the environment, combines the two. And when you do that, you produce two things electricity and water. Do it that way rather than burning it. Process is much more efficient and you get electricity directly. And so if you're trying to do something like propel an electric vehicle, a fuel cell works beautifully. One of the organizers of this demo Department of Energy's Ben Gould explains why the Marine Corps
00:00:52 would want to use hydrogen in drones instead of traditional fossil fuels. Hydrogen is awesome. It's a really, really unique fuel. It's sometimes referred to as the Swiss Army knife of chemicals. It can do many, many things. So it's, you know, higher and has better reach and lower signature. And that's why the Marines are interested in. One of the most important aspects of this demo was the interagency collaboration. A really important thing is, you know, hydrogen crosses across all fields and all agencies. So it's going to be very important for the Department of Energy and for the Navy and DoD for us all work together. Right. This is an all hands on deck kind of problem. No one department can do it by itself. So it's really important for us to have events like this where we can coordinate and like share lessons learned and talk.
00:01:37 This collaboration allowed NRL to transition in their fuel cell into an actual application in the Stalker UAS. So we have an example here of a hydrogen fuel cell technology that was developed at NRL and commercialized through a partner, Northwest UAV, the idea being to move the hydrogen fuel cell technology we had developed out of the lab in an industry where it's available for applications like this Stalker unmanned aircraft. It was a success. Rick and his team see a bright future ahead for hydrogen fuel. We are providing technology that meets the needs of the Marine Corps and the Department of Defense. We are also pushing the envelope in developing technologies that have real environmental benefits. And, you know, from a personal perspective, I think national
00:02:20 defense and reducing our environmental footprint are both very important to me.