NASA Projects

NASA Hydrogen Research at Florida Universities Program

One of FSEC’s most extensive hydrogen and fuel cell research efforts has been the Hydrogen Research at Florida Universities program funded by the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH. (NASA Grant NAG 3-2751).  This $20.2 million dollar project has been led and managed by FSEC and has the objective of supporting NASA’s hydrogen-related space and space launch activities. The hydrogen research program was conducted by a consortium of six Florida universities: Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida State University (FSU) and Florida A&M University (FAMU) in Tallahassee, University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville and the Florida Solar Energy Center. The Florida Solar Energy Center managed the research activities of all consortium member universities except those at the University of Florida.

This Web site presents the final report for this program and describes the R&D activities and projects conducted for NASA under this grant program. The report period was for six years beginning March 2002 and ending March 2008.  Contained within the final report are summaries of the overall activities and individual reports from each of the 29 projects supported by the effort.

The R&D activities under the NASA program covered hydrogen technologies related to production, cryogenics, sensors, storage, separation processes, fuel cells, resource assessments and education.  In the six-year period, the program funded a total of 44 individual university projects employed more than 100 faculty and more than 100 graduate research students at the six member universities. To date, researchers involved in this program have filed for more than 20 patents in all hydrogen technology areas and put out over 220 technical publications and made over 190 presentations in the last two years.  The NASA research grant has also led to the universities receiving an additional $6.336 million of funding from other federal agencies for research on twelve projects that are all related to the NASA effort (see Abbreviated Final Report).

This Web site gives access to the program final report.  The full report contains over 700 pages, thus, this site is organized to most effectively see the topics of your interest without having to download the full report.  The site is organized as follows:

• Executive Summary – 5 pages in length (PDF 40kb)
• Final Report Table of Contents – 4 pages in length (PDF 25kb)
• Abbreviated Final Report from the FSEC PIs – 16 pages in length (PDF 143kb)
• One page summaries of each of the 29 individual reports – 29 pages in length (PDF 210kb)

The project final reports from each of the individual researchers may be viewed by going to either the Table of Contents or to the particular one-page summary and then clicking on the report title.

For those of you that are interested in the previous work done under this program, a NASA Contract Report No. CR-2006-214326 was published in August 2006.  This contract report covers the time period of March 2002 to March 2006. To see this NASA CR, go to:
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/GLTRS/browse.pl?all/CR-2006-214326.html.

View University of Florida's NASA GRANTS - NAG3-2750 & NAG3-2930 Impact Report.