Hungarian-Born Process Control Expert Seeks to Mass-Produce Solar-H2 Plants - Now

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY - A Hungarian-born process control and environmental expert who came to the United States as a pennyless student refugee after Hungary’s1956 Revolution, now wants to help bring about another revolution: the commercial large-scale introduction of solar hydrogen, as quickly as possible.

Béla Lipták, speaking at the Bard College anniversary conference.

“The time for editorials and conferences is over,” says Béla Lipták, PE, editor of the Environmental Engineers’ Handbook and other publications and president of Béla G. Lipták Associates, Stamford, CT. He founded his company after a 16-year career as chief instrument engineer at C & R, Inc.(later John Brown Ltd), an engineering design firm, and he taught as adjunct professor at Yale University from 1975 to 1997.

“We must demonstrate the feasibility, reliability and cost of transferring from the oil to the hydrogen economy if we want to avoid the coming energy wars and stop global warming,” Lipták, who is 70 now, told H&FCL.

Lipták was interviewed here at Bard College during the 50th anniversary reunion of Hungarian freedom fighters and refugees; Bard hosted 300 of them in 1956 when they first arrived in this country (the Feb. 21 “New York Times” carried a moving story about the event). He has prepared designs of two solar hydrogen plants: one to make fuel for fuel cell cars and the other to provide solar steam, heat and electricity.

His ideas are laid out in an 18-page document, “The Global Energy Future: Solar Hydrogen Demonstration Plant,” at http://hungaria.org/uploaded/documents/
TheGlobalEnergyFuture.pdf.

His technical assumptions are straightforward and fairly conservative - no reliance on as-yet unproven technologies: Solar energy is converted to electricity at about 15% conversion efficiency resulting in costs of about 20 cents per kWh; electrolysis generates hydrogen gas at about 66% conversion efficiency, followed by compression and liquefaction at about 62% efficiency producing liquid hydrogen at costs he estimates would be between $3 and $5 per kg.

He envisions designing three standardized packages in sizes of 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 kg/year of hydrogen for, respectively, individual households, schools and hospitals, and small communities, to be mass-produced for worldwide shipping.

Lipták has also drawn up a time table for securing financing, bids, delivery of components, installation, debugging and startup of two solar demonstration plants, with startup and patenting scheduled for 2009, to be followed by a final report and conference a year later. But he readily acknowledges all this is pretty iffy, in part because he has no firm commitment so far from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences with which he has been working for some time (he has exchanged letters on the subject with Hungary’s foreign minister Kinga Göncz).

Both the British and American embassies in Budapest have been helpful and have agreed to forward his proposals to, among others, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the International Partnership for a Hydrogen Economy (IPHE).

He says he does not want to “wait forever,” though, and he has taken first steps to get the project underway on his own. He hopes to present his concept to an influential fellow Hungarian, the investor, philanthropist and political activist George Soros, and also to Bill Gates. Last month he wrote to Virgin Airlines chairman Sir Richard Branson, who recently made news with his pledge to put up $25 million to fight greenhouse gases, asking for help.

Lipták told Branson he wants to build the first demonstration plant in Hungary, “not only because I am a former Hungarian freedom fighter but also because I would like to show that the solar-hydrogen technology also has a potential in moderate climates.”

He added that as an engineer who has contributed to building the plastics industry, worked on President Carter’s “Energy Independence” task force, designed the world’s first self-heating office building (IBM headquarters Manhattan), and as editor of the Environmental Engineers’ Handbook, “I know I can do this.”

Lipták has published 26 technical books. He is listed in Who is Who of American Scientists and Engineers, is the editor-in-chief of the Instrument Engineers’ Handbook now in its fourth edition, recipient of the ISA (The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society) Life Achievement Award and the Control Hall of Fame award.

Wrote Lipták, “I don’t do this for money. I have enough. I am doing this because it needs to be done.”

Contact: Béla Lipták, 203/357-7614, fax 203/325-3922; e-mail, Liptakbela@aol.com; http://hometown.aol.com/liptakbela