Last week engineers from Birmingham University unveiled the Ross Barlow, an experimental canal boat powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
The University press release outlines the launch here, and the University's Hydrogen Research Group describes its Protium project here.
There's a more detailed PDF of the Protium project here. They don't claim it's a 'first', which is just as well, because it isn't.
An article from 7 years ago, "Are fuel cells the new rock n' roll?", describes Zetek, a company that set out to prove that you could build boats powered that way.
The first fuel-cell canal boat was Pangea (pictured left), built by Reading Marine in 2001-2 and launched using Zetek's systems. Unfortunately Zetek went bust shortly afterwards, apparently losing funding in the wake of 9/11.
While Pangea worked, it obviously was an impractical concept boat rather than the first in a new generation, because I heard it was later converted to a conventional diesel boat. Or perhaps into a diesel-electric drive. Whatever, Pangea turned out to be a one-off.
Five years later the proof-0f-concept Ross Barlow appears to include several enhancements. However, its trumpeted 'green hydrogen' seems to me simply to be hydrogen generated by wind turbines. I wonder how many wind turbines you'll need to power a fuel-cell narrowboat? And how many to drive all 30,000 of Britain's canal craft?
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