A WVU professor helps keep summer breezes clean.

Anybody who's ever been bathed in exhaust fumes from a West Virginia coal truck can appreciate the research of Professor Nigel Clark. He specializes in the study of alternative fuels, engines, and emissions. He's looking for ways to make big trucks, buses, and such run better and cleaner.

Clark is one of five WVU professors engaged in this work. The others are Mridul Gautam, Donald Lyons, Gregory Thompson, and Scott Wayne. All are colleagues in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources.

"Our group is engaged in understanding the contribution of emissions from heavy-duty vehicles to the emissions inventory—essentially, an environmental assessment," says Clark. "Specifically, we characterize levels of emissions from both diesel and alternate-fuel trucks and buses."

His group is concerned with using advanced technology to minimize vehicle emissions. New technologies such as linear engines, hybrid electric vehicles, and exhaust "after-treatment" devices are among the things they are examining. Their research also focuses on improved, cleaner fuels such as low-sulfur diesel fuel.

Clark and each of the other four investigators leads a separate part of the overall research effort—which is funded at about $4 million each year from a wide-ranging group of external sponsors. These include the U.S. Department of Energy, the State of California Air Resources Board, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Cummins Engine Co., Caterpillar Inc., International Trucks, Volvo, and Mack Trucks. The Coordinating Research Council also sponsors their research.

Clark is responsible for programs that use the WVU Transportable Laboratories and is the principal investigator on emissions inventory and hybrid electric bus programs.

The group's research team includes, besides the five professors, a staff of eight engineering scientists and program coordinators and eight technicians, plus about 30 graduate students—ten of whom work for Clark.

"Philosophically, our group embraces the multi-investigator concept that is essential for large-program success," Clark says. That concept is part of WVU's overall agenda for research, articulated in the WVU Strategic Plan for Research (on line at www.wvu.edu/~research).

Although Clark is a chemical engineer by training, he says he has had "a long interest in internal combustion engines. I recognized that the heavy-duty vehicle arena lacked scientific attention simply because professionals in science and technology can relate to their own automobiles, but not to trucks and buses."

Clark's research has at least one benefit to West Virginians that residents can literally smell and taste: cleaner air. In California, Clark is helping state regulators examine new inspection and maintenance procedures for trucks that will help identify and clean up vehicles emitting too heavily.

"Our benefits are usually viewed as national, since our air-quality concerns are national," he says. "But locally and statewide we are contributing to economic development by having established a $4 million-per-year research enterprise in Morgantown."

As a result of their established record in vehicle propulsion research, Clark and another colleague, Associate Professor Parviz Famouri of the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, have been awarded a Graduate Automotive Technology Education Program by the U.S. Department of Energy. This is a highly competitive national honor that enhances course offerings to graduate students.

Clark views teaching as an essential aspect of his role as a WVU faculty member. While research offers its own challenges and rewards, teaching requires that Clark stay abreast of the latest developments in his area of expertise. "I blend research and teaching," he says. "Remaining current in my research informs my undergraduate and graduate classes."

As a result of his efforts in all aspects of his activities at WVU, Clark is one of the University's most distinguished faculty members. He assumed the George B. Berry Chair in Engineering in July 1999. The position was created with an endowment by the late George Berry, a 1958 WVU chemical engineering graduate, and his widow, Carolyn. Clark says he is using his endowed chair position to expand his research activities.

"Although the area of emissions from vehicles is an engineering issue, it ends up being impacted by public policy and health issues and ultimately ends up being controlled by law," says Clark, a faculty member in the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources since 1984, when he joined as a research assistant professor.

"My vision is to move my research beyond engineering and look at it from a more multidisciplinary perspective," he adds. "This would involve working with investigators in other WVU colleges and examining such issues as health effects associated with vehicle exhausts."

Summer 2002 Contents

Home