40509840-fuel-of-the-future-10-2-10

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The Right Fuel for the Future

We passed the peak of the Hubbert Curve for oil production in the U. S. in 1970 and by some

estimates have passed the Hubbert peak for worldwide oil production in 2010. The late Dr. M.King Hubbert, geophysicist, was an authority on the estimation of energy reserves and on theprediction of their patterns of discovery and depletion.

His spring 1956 prediction of the peak of U.S. oil production in 1970 at the meeting of theSouthern District of the American Petroleum Institute was not well accepted by his audience.Nonetheless, his prediction proved remarkably accurate. With new discoveries like shale oiland the oil under the Arctic shelf, the vision for peaking worldwide oil production is a bitmurkier, but we are about there. Oil s days are numbered as indicated in this worldwide ExxonMobil chart:

Note that since about 1983, global oil consumption/production (black line) for Exxon Mobil isabove global discovery. Similar charts are available for all companies discoveries.

Our global community, our Earth home, is being forced to take a new step in sourcing and usingenergy. Green, renewable and local are words that come to mind when contemplating this newenergy. The future energy scenario proposed here is probable, desirable, and a happy endingto the present day political, economic, and technical turmoil over dwindling oil-based fuels.


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We should note, before we decide what fuel is right for us from now on, that fuels and cartechnology are evolutionary, not revolutionary, and that there is nothing new under the sun.

y Electric cars were the most popular cars built in 1901 and 1902 and lasted intothe 1920 s

y E.g., the 1903 Krieger had electric and gasoline power and front wheeldrive. This was the world s first hybrid vehicle.

y The first batteries used in earlier electric vehicles were not evenrechargeable

y Fu el cells have been around since 1839y Hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells were used for power on the U.S. Apollo Moon

Missions through 1972y The first automobile powered by a fuel cell occurred on April 24, 1998, in Palm

Desert, CA

In October 2001, a month after 9/11, I sent letters to President George W. Bush, SpencerAbrahams, Head of Department of Energy, and Christie Whitman, head of the EnvironmentalProtection Agency, laying out a case for a better transportation and industrial fuel: hydrogen.Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is a science teacher s dream. Burnhydrogen and you get water and ZERO pollution. I was teaching science at The Francis ParkerSchool in Linda Vista, CA. Parker, founded in 1912, is private, coeducational, and collegepreparatory, with over one hundred teachers stretching the minds of 1240 K-12 students fromdiverse backgrounds.

The only immediate response to my letters was a thoughtful, lengthy reply from Christie

Whitman. She liked hydrogen, the zero emissions fuel, but said the interest and efforts of private citizens are most important to the functioning of government and she appreciated metaking the time to express my views.

Then, in January, 2002, Spencer Abrams announced at the Detroit Automobile Show thathenceforth hydrogen would be the fuel of the future for the United States. Naturally, I do takefull credit for this auspicious shift in national energy policy!

Hyd rogen

All the fossil fuel that existed before we started burning it over the last 150 years could fit into acube about 4.1 miles on an edge. Ever y d ay for the next five billion years (give or take a billionyears) the Earth will receive an amount of solar energy equal to the energy in the fossil fuelcube (Hydrogen Today, Vol. 18 No. 1). Why not use this solar energy for transportation andstop burning carbon?


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Hydrogen s cost for the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline in 2001 was, by mycalculations, about $9.00. I worked with a chemistry professor at the University of California,San Diego, to arrive at this figure. We assumed electrolysis of water by electricity to makehydrogen. The cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in the U. S. at the time was about $2.50 agallon. Who in his right mind would think hydrogen would replace anything? Well, Spencer

Abrahams and Bud Suiter did, for two.

In 2001, a gallon of gasoline in Japan or Western Europe was nearly $7.00/gallon, a closer horserace with hydrogen. Given that all oil used by the U.S., Europe and Japan comes from the sameplaces and costs the same amount at the wellhead, what does this tell you about the effect of politics onenergy pricing and consumption? More on the subject of the government effect on fuel policy iscovered below.

Hydrogen is made today mainly for industrial use from natural gas and costs about $5 to $10per kilogram, more than double an equivalent amount of gasoline. But hydrogen fuel-cell carsalso have at least double the energy efficiency of today s spark ignition gasoline powered cars

(overall energy efficiency of 70% vs. 35%), which helps offset the fuel price difference.

Today the 2010 Honda Clarity FCX fuel cell car averages 60 miles per kilogram of hydrogen. Butthe Japanese Energy Department estimates future prices for hydrogen will fall to $2 to $3 akilogram, Toyota said on August 6, 2010, as reported by Bloomberg News Service.

Today, a gallon of gasoline costs $3. A spark ignition gasoline powered car would need to get90 mpg to match the energy cost performance of the Honda FCX with hydrogen at$2/kilogram.Now hydrogen as a car fuel is starting to get interesting!


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Honda 2010 FCX Hydrogen-Oxygen Fuel Cell Car on the roads of southern California

Now in 2010, I would argue that hydrogen can be produced at home for free. If I m right, whyis there not a stampede to using hydrogen to power our transportation and industrial furnaces?

Bear with me on this idea, because I think you ll agree this is an intriguing concept with afuture.

G overnment Contrib u tions

Before getting to free hydrogen, though, let s ask what the U. S. government is now doingabout making hydrogen the fuel of the future, eight years after Spencer Abraham sannouncement.

Our tax dollars have been spent to make the hydrogen policy come true, eventually, but of course we as a nation continue to maintain the status quo on coal, oil and nuclear energy,because those entrenched energy sources power the economy today, make wealth forinvestors, create many, many jobs, and validate past policy maker s decisions.

Stopping the use of these antiquated energy sources is hard to do, much like trying to stopcelebrating Italian Christopher Columbus discovering America. We know many others hadvisited and discovered America long before Columbus fabled voyages; the Portuguese, nativeAmericans, and the Vikings lead by Eric the Red to name a few. After all, Columbus is in all our


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history books! We just can t bring ourselves to change history books or national holidayscelebrating these non-achievements.

By 2008, the U.S. government had contributed one billion dollars to making hydrogen the fuelof the future. Now the government is scrapping that investment.

In May 2009, the Obama Administration announced that it will "cut off funds" for thedevelopment of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, since other vehicle technologies will lead to quickerreduction in vehicle emissions with a shorter development time. The U.S. Secretary of Energy ,Dr. Steven Chu, explained that hydrogen vehicles " will not be practical over the next 10 to 20years ", and also mentioned the challenges involved in the development of the requiredinfrastructure to distribute hydrogen fuel. Nevertheless, the U.S. government will continue tofund research related to stationary fuel cells. The National Hydrogen Association and the U.S.Fuel Cell Council criticized this decision arguing that " ...the cuts proposed in the DOE hydrogenand fuel cell program threaten to disrupt commercialization of a family of technologies that areshowing exceptional promise and beginning to gain market traction ."

The history of government meddling in the outcome of which fuel is favored is interesting. Asnoted above, and more by accident than design, in 1862, Congress passed the Internal RevenueAct to fund the Civil War. Alcohol was taxed disproportionately to oil ($2.00/gallon vs.$.10/gallon), resulting in the rapid growth of oil as a fuel since it was more economic thanalcohol. Two dollars was a lot of money in 1862. The alcohol tax was not changed until 1906.By then oil was dominant as a transportation fuel.

Government regulation of fuels, emissions, and automobile mileage has been extensive sincethe mid-1950s, and I would argue has been beneficial to the environment and to the improved

technology and efficiency of transportation vehicles. Such regulation has certainly not beenlimited to the U. S., and a comparison with California s efforts is useful.

P u blic P olic y in U. S.

y Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 Feds get involved, research startsy Clean Air Acts of 1963 and 1967 national program, enforcement, researchy Clean Air Act of 1970 Established air quality standards, control of motor vehicle

emissions, mileage targetsy Clean Air Acts of 1977 & 1990 More enforcement and added acid rain and ozone

protectiony Clean Air Rules 2004 Cap and Trade added, control of mercury, diesel emissionsy Tax incentives for hybrids placed in service after 12/31/05 and purchased on or before

12/31/10, up to $4,000. The Ford Fusion hybrid, for example, earned $3,400. y Tax incentives for electric vehicles purchased in 2009 were eligible for a federal income

tax credit of up to $7,500. The amount will vary based on the capacity of the batteryused to power the vehicle. The Tesla roadster qualified for the full $7,500. This taxincentive is in effect now and into the future with variations and reductions.


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y American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009y $400 million allocated for electric vehicle researchy $2 billion allocated for advanced battery systems research and vehicle partsy $3 billion allocated for more fuel efficient Federal fleet by 9/30/11y Fuel cell motor vehicle tax credit: up to $8K/each (this is the only incentive left

for fuel cell vehicles!)y Alternate fuel tax credit: $.50/gal

P u blic P olic y in Englan d

y Clean Air Act of 1956y Reaction to Great Smog of 1952 in London which resulted in many deaths

y New legislation April 2009 in Britain to jump start electric car sales starting in 2011: a5000 Pound Sterling voucher will be paid to purchasers of electric vehicles (about thesame as the U. S. incentive)

y England spending 250 million Pounds for cleaner transport, including electriccharging stations for these cars

y Now 120 car charging stations are in place in England

P u blic P olic y in California

y California Air Reso u rces Boar d (CARB) California is the only state that can setstandards with Federal waiver, standards which are usually more challenging thanFederal standards

y 13 other states follow Californiay Assembly Bill 1493 mandates maximum reduction of CO 2 for major car companies:

requires 42.5 MPG average for cars sold in state by 2020y SB 1 adopted January 2006 gives a 20% cash incentive for installing solar panelsy AB 811 Berkeley Plan allows financing for solar panels to be added to property tax

base (part of the free hydrogen strategy noted below)y April 24, 2009 CARB votes to replace corn based ethanol and fossil fuels 80% carbon

reduction mandated by 2050y Result: requires 52 MPG average for cars sold in state by 2030

Wh o agrees wit h th is new government p u sh to electric ve h icles?

GM and Honda have stated they have more faith in hydrogen powered cars in the long run thanelectric cars, but the Obama administration has been adding to electric vehicle research whilecutting back on hydrogen vehicle research. Battery research has been awarded $1.4 billion in2009 by the Department of Energy. Contrast that with $1.0 billion spent on hydrogen researchover the last eight years.

Fuel-cell cars will become necessary, said Takashi Moriya, head of Tokyo-based Honda sgroup developing the technology. We re positioning it as the ultimate zero-emission car.


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Just a few years ago, in 1999, the U.S. government took the opposite tack and cut back onelectric vehicle research. GM was forced to scrap its electric vehicle program, known as the EV-1. Now that the government owns GM, this government change does not bode well for taxpayers, or for GM s four hundred hydrogen car engineers.

California Air Resources Board, Department of Energy, and Department of Transportationstudies reported in September, 2010 show that variations of spark ignition, diesel, and hybridelectric, partial hybrid electric and full electric vehicles are now forecast to be the vehicles of choice for the 2017-2025 period. Fuel cell vehicles are excluded. This provides the basis forgovernment funding and rule making for emissions and fuel consumption for vehicles deliveredduring that timeframe.

But let s look closer at electric cars. If you use an all electric car 80-150 miles a day, you mustrecharge batteries in your garage every night. Then you must replace 600+ lbs of very

expensive lithium-ion batteries every eight years as they wear out.Let s suppose you are driving to a meeting, but can t get there for lack of charge. Now youmust find a public charging station, harder than finding a gasoline station. When you find it,the best case with high speed chargers is for battery recharging to take hours, not minutes as itdoes to refill a gasoline tank. To avoid that charging time, one enterprising Israeli company in aventure with Nissan is offering to exchange your 600+ lb battery pack for a charged one.Imagine the mechanic forgetting to secure the electrical or mechanical connections every timeyou have to exchange? Guess how much time it will take in the recharging station to do theexchange.

This electric vehicle fixation is an inelegant transportation sol u tion at best and begs thequestion of government rationality. Fortunately, many government funded studies areunderway now to see what consumers will do about charging their vehicles at public chargingstations in the 2010-2013 period. The answers may cause a reversal of government plans forfuture vehicle funding by 2013. Remember: recharging a hydrogen fuel cell car takes justminutes.

Market Response to t h e G overnment P ress u res

A quick snapshot of reactions in the automotive marketplace to government standards, fundingand regulation tells the story: go where the money is!

y T esla announces all electric sedan due in 2011

0-60 5.6 sec, 130 MPH, 160 mile range

Tesla sports car available now


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y N ASCARuses unleaded fuel since 2007 for all racesy American Le Mans racing series now uses E10 racing fuel, meaning 10% ethanol, 90%

gasoliney P roton HOGEN hydrogen generation systems available today for service stations, home

usey F raser- N as h N amir : hybrid-electric car, all carbon fiber, 0-62 MPH in 3.5 sec, 187 MPH

top speed, Giugiaro design, 2009

y AC P rop u lsion , San Dimas, CA: Builds drive trains for Tesla and Mini E electric vehicles

y Ph oenix Motorcars , Phoenix, AZ: Converting new Korean trucks and SUVs to electricdrive

y Hi P erformance G reen Cars , Ontario, CA: Installing Alternating Current (AC) propulsion

drive trains in Chinese two-seater vehicles

y Heliocentris : Fuel cell stacks and H 2 generators offered over a wide range of performance

y Ballar d Automotive Fuel Cell Division partnered with Daimler and F or d 1Q2008 fuelcell vehicles are coming, but not until 2020 Automotive Fuel Cell Company, AFCC,formed

y All major car man u fact u rers now sell hybrids, will be selling electric ve h icles shortly

y Daimler has sixty fuel cell buses on the roads of Germany

Most major car man u fact u rers have fuel cell test vehicles on the road today

Source: Road and Track, June 2009

Wh at is t h e attraction of electric ve h icles?

For performance enthusiasts, electric vehicles can be rocket sleds. The electric motor at eachwheel (in some designs) generates maximum torque at zero RPM. So zero to sixty miles perhour acceleration rates are fast (definitely sub-four seconds for Teslas and Fraser-Nash Namirs).

Jaguar has just announced the C-X75 concept car with such an electric vehicle design plus ahybrid charging feature that uses two small gas turbines for recharging the batteries to extendthe electric vehicle range from 68 miles to 560 miles. The motors generate 780 BHP and 1,187


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lb-ft of torque and propel the car to 205 MPH. This is not a likely production vehicle, but it iseasy on the eye (below), and some of its features could be in production on other models soon.

Not only do these high end electric vehicles go fast, but the new exterior designs of electricsports cars are state of the art and are very attractive. The Chevy Volt coming onto market nowlooks like a standard sedan but does not use the powerful motors and batteries of the latestelectric sports cars, in order to keep the cost down.

Jaguar C-X75 Concept Car Photo, 2010

The performance of high end electric vehicles is best demonstrated by looking at the power andtorque curves for the new Tesla roadster. Note that maximum torque is generated at zero RPMand that the power goes right on up to 13,000 RPM. That is a range far beyond what mostspark ignition or diesel engines can achieve.


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Tesla Torque and Power Curves from Tesla Website

Alcoh ol an d N at u ral G as

We can t talk about fuels of the future without talking about fuels from the past. Ethanol, analcohol derived from renewable biomass such as corn or sugar cane, is now being burned as

fuel in cars. As noted above, California has just excluded ethanol derived from corn as a futurefuel, at least for now possibly because of competition with food corn pushing food corn pricesup, and the high energy cost to produce and deliver a gallon of ethanol from corn.

Ethanol has become part of the collective global consciousness and may even be part of yourpresent tank of gasoline, from 10% to 100% of each tank full. Depending on your disposition,this may be better described as a thankful fuel rather than a tank full of fuel, since ethanol


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contains a lot less carbon than gasoline, and therefore emits a lot less carbon dioxide per gallonburned. Ethanol, C 2H3OH, has two carbons per molecule burned, as compared with octane,C8H16, one component of gasoline, which has eight carbons per molecule burned. This is onereason why proponents of natural gas, CH 4, are happy about natural gas as the fuel of the future

(compressed natural gas is used in some San Diego buses): big reductions in carbon dioxide!Acid rain and climate change are reduced! Eureka!

Summarizing the carbon impact of alternative fuels:

y Met h anol CH3OH

y Eth anol C2H5OH

y G asoline C7H16 Plus C8H18 mix, C8 is octane, but mix ranges from C 6H14 toC12H26 plus other compounds

y By-products of combustion: CO 2 and H 2O, plus CO, S2O, N2O ..

And . HYDROG EN H2

y No carbon! By product of combustion is H 2O only in a fuel cell, but you get some nastynitrogen compounds if you use hydrogen in an internal combustion engine

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2001-04/987004809.Ch.r.html

As described above, alcohol would be an even bigger part of the transportation fuel industry

today if it weren t for a political twist of fate in 1862. In 1859, Drake struck oil in westernPennsylvania, leading to a new fuel, kerosene, for lamps and lanterns. Acting to fund theUnion s efforts in the Civil War, Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1862 and a $2.00/gallontax on alcohol. What was the tax on kerosene? Just $.10/gallon. This tax differential was notchanged until Teddy Roosevelt withdrew the alcohol tax in 1906, by which time oil wasestablished as the fuel of choice, subsidized for over forty years. As late as the early 1920 s,auto industry executives including Henry Ford still thought alcohol might still be a better fuelchoice, due to alcohol s inherent anti-knock advantage.

Then in 1924 E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. invented the gasoline additive tetraethyl lead andgasoline immediately erased alcohol s main advantage as an automotive fuel. Of course,tetraethyl lead was later banned by the Environmental Protection Agency as dangerous tohuman health and is no longer a component of U.S. fuels.


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Roa d Block

The last hurdle in the way of using hydrogen for transportation is the cost of hydrogen/oxygenfuel cells. Ballard Power Systems of Vancouver, Canada, with revenues of $27.4 million for thefirst six months of 2010, has licensed transportation fuel cells to Ford and Daimler in a 2008 joint venture, but the cost of a good fuel cell stack today is still high. The Honda FRX and otherfuel cell cars running on the roads today are leased to owners because purchase prices wouldbe too high. And Honda would not lease me one last year. The dealer said that if I reallywanted one I should call Jamie Lee Curtis in Hollywood who might sub-lease her FRX Clarity tome if I asked the right way.

The good news is that the price of a fuel cell stack has dropped by 50% over the last five years.The bad news is that they still cost too much. When Toyota made clear this spring its aim torelease a hydrogen-powered fuel cell auto to the public in 2015 for $50,000, you can see why

there is need for improvement. Although to be honest, in 2010 dollars, that is just $39,185,assuming 5%/year inflation. The Toyota fuel cell car is not expensive in today s range of automotive prices.

Further cost improvement on fuel cell designs looks promising. For example, recent research atBrookhaven National Laboratory could lead to the replacement of platinum by a gold-palladiumcoating which may be less susceptible to poisoning and thereby improve fuel cell lifetimeconsiderably. Another method would use iron and sulfur instead of platinum. This is possiblethrough an intermediate conversion by bacteria. This would lower the cost of a fuel cellsubstantially, as the platinum in a regular fuel cell costs around $1,500, and the same amountof iron costs $1.50. The concept is being developed by a coalition of the John Innes Centre andthe University of Milan-Bicocca. (Wikipedia)

G etting t h e cost o u t

Until recently, building a fuel cell sufficiently powerful to run a car was costly - even more thana vehicle powered by electrochemical batteries or a hybrid drive. To attain the power levels of astandard spark ignition internal combustion engine in a midsize sedan, a fuel cell needs toproduce from 60 to 90 kW. When NASA first started using fuel-cell technology in space in thelate 1960s, a hydrogen fuel cell cost about $500,000 per kW. Today that price has dropped to

around $500 per kW - but that means that a fuel-cell engine still costs about $25,000, which isaround seven times the price of a typical spark ignition engine which runs about $3,500.

Working for several years with specialists from Ford and Daimler (Mercedes), Ballardresearchers studied the automotive industry's needs for low-cost, high-volume fuel-cell stackmanufacturing and specifically designed the Mark 900 unit to accommodate them. "The key todeveloping an efficient supply chain," Ballard explained then, "is to choose low-cost, readilyavailable materials and cheap, scalable, automated manufacturing processes. We did an actual


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commercial plant study for the annual production of 300,000 vehicle equivalents, consideringthe building, logistics, and other crucial details. Using a standard rule of thumb for valueallocation in fuel-cell systems of 40% for the stack, 40% for the system components, and 20%for the electric drive and transmission, we determined that fuel-cell power plants could be soldat around $50-60 per kW, perhaps less as volumes increase. (Automotive Engineering

International Online, 2010).

The likelihood is that fuel cells will continue to drop in cost and by 2025 should be competitivewith other propulsion systems. This is especially noteworthy because the fuel cells have twicethe energy efficiency of a spark ignition/gasoline engine.

In the meantime, as of July 2007, California had 179 fuel cell vehicles and twent y five h yd rogenref u eling stations in operation with plans in the works for ten more stations (Wiki-Pedia).California has one in five vehicle registrations in the U. S., and an aggressive California AirResources Board pushing the Federal government on emissions, so is a U.S. leader in alternatefuel vehicles and support systems.

Hyd rogen is F ree!

Take this statement with a grain of salt, but there is a grain of truth in what is coming next.

Let s say you have a solar electric home. You generate more electricity than you use during theday and your meter runs backward. You have excess capacity on your system. How aboutinstalling an electrolysis unit for making hydrogen in your garage using this free electricity? Thecost of the solar electric system is already in place on your roof. You re just adding a newapplication. You will need a compressor, not free, to bring your hydrogen gas up to 10,000pounds per square inch, and a small 316L stainless steel or metal hydride storage tank for

hydrogen, also not free, but both are readily available. Now with a proper hose, you can refillyour hydrogen powered car in a few minutes in your own garage and never have to visit aservice station again.

The idea for this in-house solution came from Amory Lovins research at the Rocky MountainInstitute, a widely acclaimed think tank. Lovins proposed years ago to make hydrogen inexisting gas stations from solar power and eliminate the need for pipelines or tankers totransport hydrogen. Back then it seemed that pipelines would be a good idea to this writer,especially when you considered DOE s plans to put a nuclear reactor in Idaho, the sole purposeof which was to produce hydrogen. Pipelines made sense to get the hydrogen to Californiawhere one in five U.S. cars operate.

But a $100+ billion new pipeline system for shipping hydrogen around the country now makesno sense at all if you can make hydrogen locally in your own garage, or down the street at theservice station, using the energy of the sun. Proton Energy Systems, Inc. and HeliocentrisEnergy Systems, Inc., among others, sell these hydrogen making and storing systems today.

Free hydrogen: better than eureka! And hydrogen is green, renewable and local.


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Bud Suiter

Science Teacher

The Francis Parker School, Linda Vista, CA

y Rocky Mountain Institute www.rmi.org/

y Am ory Lovinswww.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1894410_1893209_1893457,00.html

y Ballard For m s A uto m otive Partnershipwww.autobloggreen.com/2007/11/08/breaking-daimler-and- f ord -join-forces-with-afcc-to-develop-auto/

y Ballard Power Syste m s www. ballard .com/

y T esla Motors http://www.teslamotors.com/

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