Jim Fletcher, a mechanical engineering doctoral student in fuel cell technology, said the bus is 10 percent more efficient than comparable diesel buses -- a first step in what researchers expect will one day be a far more efficient form of transportation.
In another exciting development, researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a self-charging power cell that's able to directly convert mechanical energy into chemical energy, making it possible to harvest up to five times more energy from footsteps.
The question is when storing of electricity in batteries or a fuel cell feedstock will become more eonomicial than burning a form of chemical energy to gain mechanical power.
The trick is to replace graphite with tin for the anode, which is one of the two main components in a battery cell, said Grant Norton, who headed the research and is a professor of mechanical and materials engineering at the university.