Within a couple of weeks, Centre Area Transportation Authority (CATA) will allow a partially hydrogen-fueled bus to carry passengers around campus.

Bus No. 85 will serve the Blue and White Loop routes and will initially be powered by natural gas. But as testing progresses, it will be filled with hydrogen-compressed natural gas, a blend of 30 percent hydrogen and 70 percent natural gas, Joel Anstrom, research associate at Penn State and director of the Hybrid and Hydrogen Vehicle Research Laboratory, said.

Because it is partially fueled by hydrogen, it will reduce the amount of carbon emissions in the environment, Paul Ruskin, spokesman for the Office of Physical Plant, said.

"The exhaust from a [hydrogen] vehicle is primarily water, so you don't have the aerial pollutants that you would get from a regular combustion engine," Ruskin said.

The bus cost $80,000 to renovate and was funded by grants from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.

Additionally, Anstrom said, Collier Technologies, Inc. donated the $30,000 engine.

The project of converting the bus to run on a hydrogen blend began in summer 2005 and has taken longer to complete than expected because one of the components took a while to be properly adjusted, Hugh Mose, general manager of CATA, said.

The bus was in its final testing stages during spring break when it was put on the street without passengers for testing. CATA officials thought the bus would be running with passengers after spring break, but problems with the air conditioning system kept the bus off the streets, Anstrom said.

While there aren't any definite plans, CATA could conceivably add two more hydrogen buses to its fleet because the hydrogen fueling station located at OPP could support them, Anstrom said, adding new buses would likely be purchased commercially.

"I think everything will depend on how this first bus works out," Mose said.

The bus will likely consume 26 kilograms of hydrogen daily, Anstrom said. The hydrogen fueling station can produce 100 kilograms of hydrogen a day, but Anstrom said the goal is to use a total of 40 kilograms of hydrogen a day.

Mose said he doesn't think running a hydrogen bus will save CATA money in the short run.

"Because the hydrogen that is going to be used in the bus is made from natural gas, it suggests to me that if you take natural gas and put it through a process to create hydrogen ... that process has to be more expensive than just running it on natural gas," he said.

Students may or may not notice a difference in how the bus runs, Mose said.

"If we're doing our jobs right, it ought to run just as well with the blend of hydrogen and natural gas," Mose said. "Because it's a very different engine from the engines in the other buses, I think it will have a very different sound to it."

There will be decals on the outside of the bus representing the various entities that were involved in the project, making it obvious bus No. 85 is different, Mose said.

"You can tell from the outside that it's a special bus," he said.