Kansas City is the regional alternative fuels leader

By Mark Forsythe The Kansas City Post From time to time, (okay all the time) I use this venue to promote creative partnerships. Government and academia. Government and private industry. As with most creative ideas, the concept gets lost by the "that's the way we've always done it" crowd. Meanwhile, at the KCMO Water Department garage at 20th & Brooklyn, a true visionary is actually utilizing these radical concepts to save the city money, lessen our impact on the environment and help advance research for alternative energy. Sam Swearngin is the central fleet superintendent and creative mastermind behind Kansas City's Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicle program. Sam is an expert at finding obscure federal grants to put cleaner city vehicles on the road. Even the garage itself is heated by recaptured waste oil; the result of what else? A federal grant obtained by Sam. The local media has largely ignored that a very important project is underway right now that could have even more clean vehicles on the road. The University of Missouri is leading the way in research on gas storage in solid material. Along with Midwest Research Institute (MRI) they have developed a platform that stores natural gas in carbon "hockey pucks." I won't go into the science, but gas can be store much more effectively in carbon-based nanotubes allowing much smaller "tanks" and much lower pressures. This same technology can, and most likely will be applied to hydrogen also. And how clean is CNG? "If you put a vehicle like this on the road in Houston, it would actually clean the air" says Sam. Houston has its pollution problems, but you have to admit when the exhaust coming out the tailpipe is better than the air going in the carburetor, that's pretty clean! So MU had a grant, and MRI was helping out, but the grant money did not extend to the purchase of a vehicle to test the system in real world application. Enter the Kansas City Water Department and the Kansas City Environmental Department. We happen to have a few vehicles that get driven quite a bit. We also have the region's largest CNG fueling facility. The result? Mizzou provided the space age ANG tube testbed. MRI bucked up for the snazzy bed cover and the City is doing what we were going to do anyway; drive the truck. Of course Sam knows he's preaching to the choir when he tells me about these collaborations. Apparently this isn't the first time such programs have gone wanting for a vehicle to test new technologies in. As I was leaving, I told Sam "If only there was a city that had a transit system made up of vehicles that could easily be retrofitted with systems like clean burning CNG. A high profile, (perhaps rail?) system that would really put test systems through their paces. Starting, stopping, running in all kinds of weather. I would love to provide vehicles like that to all these governmental agencies with money burning a hole in their pockets." Hmmm. If only...