Inventor Perfects Solar Hydrogen Generator

Connecticut Post
June 13, 2006

FAIRFIELD — Tim Dolan believes he's found the key to solving the world's energy-consumption woes and the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels.

But Dolan's plan to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen — the H in H2O — isn't just a long series of scientific symbols and calculations that work only on paper.

Dolan has built a machine that creates and stores hydrogen. The device, powered by sunlight, sends electricity through water to separate hydrogen from oxygen and then pumps the hydrogen as a gas into a container, where it is stored as a renewable energy source.

"Once you have this stored hydrogen, you can take it out of here and run it into any device that uses fossil fuels," said Dolan, a 46-year-old Trumbull resident. "The only thing hydrogen won't do is it won't make plastics. That's what we need fossil fuels for."

Dolan said he converted a small engine to run on hydrogen, and the engine works fine off his machine and emits only water vapor.

"What I like about hydrogen is it's clean — there's no emissions in making it and there's no emissions in using it. You start with water and you end with water," he said.

Dolan, married and the father of three children, is president of Enabling Technologies, a Trumbull company that develops renewable energy systems. He was formerly a partner and director of research and development at Bridgestone Technologies in Bridgeport.

Bob Wall, New England regional director of Smart Power, a Hartford-based marketing company that promotes clean energy, said Dolan's machine works. "It's working. I can attest to that," Wall said. "The beauty of it is it's able to store energy."

"The next step, and this is the big step is how close are we to replicating this on a grand scale?" Wall said. "He is demonstrating that it can be done, and it could be a vital growth industry for Connecticut."

Wall, a Fairfield resident and member of the town's Clean Energy Task Force, said hydrogen could be the solution to fossil fuel shortages.

Dolan's machine, built with the help of several companies in Fairfield County, is different from a fuel cell, which uses hydrogen to create electricity. His machine uses electricity to create hydrogen.

"What they did is put the cart before the horse. They didn't come up with a good supply of hydrogen," Dolan said of fuel-cell enthusiasts. "Fuel cells are back where the first computers were."

Dolan said his machine is unique because it directly couples to a renewable power supply and can make hydrogen at high pressure without extra parts.

He said his machine, which also can operate on wind power, is not only cleaner than fossil fuels, but also more efficient compared to the energy required to use fossil fuels.

But a problem with Dolan's prototype, from a practical standpoint, is the space needed to store hydrogen.

A pound of hydrogen may have three times the energy content of fossil fuels, but it takes 400 cubic feet to store the hydrogen equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, Dolan said.

But Dolan said his machine's storage container, 4 feet by 8 feet and capable of storing 1,000 cubic feet of hydrogen, could be larger.

He said his machine also could store hydrogen at high pressure.