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"  If you&amp;#039;re parked somewhere with your lights and radio on, it&amp;#039;s a good idea to restart the engine before you run down the battery. But if your vehicle is an armored tank, and you&amp;#039;re sitting in &amp;quot;silent watch&amp;quot; mode in hostile territory, you really don&amp;#039;t want to give away your position in order to power communications and monitoring equipment. The solution may be a new, whisper-silent fuel-cell power supply that runs on the standard-issue military logistic fuel, JP-8\u2014a kerosene-based propellant used to operate everything from field stoves to tanks and jets. Researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) demonstrated a 5-kw prototype at the recent Fuel Cell Seminar in San Antonio, Texas, where it powered the conference room lights and a nearby refrigerator. Fuels cells, which combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, are already available using less convenient fuels such as natural gas and methanol. In addition to being quieter than standard diesel generators, they are considered more efficient and produce fewer emissions. But JP-8 contains significant levels of sulfur, which &amp;quot;poisons&amp;quot; the catalysts used in the fuel-cell reaction. The crucial advance in the new fuel-cell unit is a &amp;quot;gas-phase hydrodesulfurization&amp;quot; module that removes sulfur from the fuel, says Dale King, the program manager who led the research at PNNL. A fuel cell powered by JP-8 has been a longstanding military goal: The Department of Defense has funded research efforts at the Air Force Research Laboratory, the DoD Fuel Cell Test and Evaluation Center, and elsewhere. One of the key advantages to the PNNL model is its scalability. &amp;quot;The current system, which can put out 5 to 7 killowatts, weighs about 400 pounds,&amp;quot; King says. &amp;quot;But there&amp;#039;s no fundamental reason it couldn&amp;#039;t be scaled down to 500 watts and used in a small truck, or scaled up to 50 killowatts to be used as a stationary Auxiliary Power Unit.&amp;quot; The problem with JP-8--too much sulfur--also applies to standard diesel fuel. The PNNL team is currently extending its research to produce a fuel cell that will run on diesel, with the goal of producing an Auxiliary Power Unit for use in long-haul transport trucks. For now, the main barrier remains the cost: King estimates that it will take four to five years before a unit can be produced for the $2000 to $3000 that truckers might be willing to pay. The military version should be field-ready in one to two years. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a2394/4236742/>