Pedro Picazo shows the motor of his hydrogen-powered tractor, which he built using a John Deere tractor from the 1940s and the motor out of a Toyota Mirai be bought at a salvage auction. (Courtesy Kendra Meek)

CENTRALIA, Wash. — Pedro Picazo has liked to take stuff apart to see how it worked and put it back together ever since he was little. “I’ve always liked to be hands-on,” he said.

Picazo, 18, has converted a 1940s-era John Deere Model B tractor to hydrogen power.

“As of right now, I have the world’s first” hydrogen-powered tractor, Picazo said. “As of right now, I am in possession of the world’s first.”

Picazo bought a hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai at a salvage auction, took it apart and configured the parts for the tractor.

“It’s cool, but it’s a little weird,” Picazo said. “I didn’t think I’d be owning the world’s first fully hydrogen-powered tractor, let alone in a World War II tractor.”

John Deere produced the Model B tractor from 1935 to 1952.

Hydrogen interest

Picazo moved to Centralia about four years ago. His family has a 5-acre ranch in California, raising corn, sheep and horses. While playing volleyball there, a cousin showed up in a Toyota Mirai and told him it runs on water.

“I wanted to know how that worked,” Picazo said.

While discussing clean energy in freshman science, Picazo asked teacher Kendra Meek why hydrogen wasn’t used more in Washington.

“We both started digging more into it,” he said.

Picazo first built a hydrogen-powered go-cart from scratch as he studied what is needed to create a hydrogen generator.

Picazo asked to use one of the engines at the back of Meek’s classroom for the go-cart, for an FFA district competition.

“She told me, ‘As long as you can make it work with hydrogen,’” Picazo said. “That’s basically where it all started.”

Meek said she made the suggestion “kind of as a joke.”

“Oh, no — those kids by the end of the year, they had that engine working on hydrogen power,” Meek said. “By July, he had a go-cart made.”

Picazo was 14 or 15 at the time, she noted.

“And then in his junior year, he comes to me a couple of months later and says, ‘Hey, I think I’m going to build a truck,’” Meek said.

The next thing she knew, Picazo was moving forward on the tractor project. He’d made various connections while attending a state alternative energy conference with the high school principal.

The tractor took about a year in planning, designing and looking for sponsors. Picazo received about $23,000 from various sponsors.

It is possible there may be a hobby farmer with a hydrogen-powered tractor, but Meek and Picazo haven’t found one on the market, Meek said.

“He was told by innovative people that he was on the forefront of that in the agriculture industry,” Meek said. “This kid’s got connections worldwide now. It sounds very much that it could be the world’s first.”

Picazo graduated June 6 from Centralia High School, where he was the treasurer for Centralia FFA.

Hydrogen at a glance

A hydrogen tractor basically has instant torque, Picazo said.

“It’s not really the horsepower you’re looking for, it’s torque,” he said.

There’s no emissions, the only byproduct of hydrogen is water, he said. “So it’s completely renewable.”

The Douglas County Public Utility District sells hydrogen for about $4 per kilogram. About 6 kilograms are needed to fill a vehicle, Picazo said. “And you get 500 miles out of it,” he said.

Hydrogen is much more expensive in California, about $33 per kilogram, he said.

Hydrogen infrastructure is growing as more companies get interested.

Picazo wants to demonstrate hydrogen’s potential as a fuel, and that a 17-year-old can work with it. He turned 18 on June 29.

Does hydrogen fuel require extra precaution?

“Yes and no — if it’s not done correctly, yes,” Picazo said. “The tanks hold 10,000 [pounds per square inch], but they’re rated for 40,000, four times what the working pressure is going to be. The majority of times, tanks don’t see 10,000 psi; they see around 7,000 to 9,000.”

The amount of pressure depends on the fueling station, he said.

“It’s not something (the public) should be scared of,” he said. “When you mention hydrogen, people think about the Hindenburg and accidents that have happened, and they think it’s a ticking time bomb. But if you look back, when electric vehicles first started, they were catching on fire. Same with gasoline vehicles. Nothing’s 100% safe, there need to be all the safety precautions to do it.”

Software in hydrogen-powered vehicles will detect leaks. Hydrogen-powered vehicles have been on the road for years now, he said.

“The government won’t let something that’s not safe be on the road, especially coming straight out of the factory,” he said.

The carbon footprint is smaller than an electric vehicle, which requires time to charge and can only run for a certain amount of time before needing to cool down.

There’s not enough infrastructure to power all the electric vehicles, Picazo said.

Hydrogen requires electricity to make it, but “it’s basically just like a gasoline vehicle,” he said. “You plug the nozzle in, five minutes tops to fuel up to a full tank and it’s got another 400 to 600 miles on there.”

Potential farm use

Farmers can place shipping containers on their farms and purchase hydrogen generators, Picazo said. They could have separate fueling stations on their property and fuel up at little to no cost, he said.

“They just hook up to water and electricity and they could be producing their own hydrogen, and if they really wanted to, they could sell it to other farmers, too,” he said.

Picazo foresees hydrogen-powered tractors being produced and sold. He’s working on a conversion kit for vehicles.

Hydrogen would be more affordable than diesel and would not require delivery, he said.

A 10-gallon tank would require about $40 to fill up on diesel at $4 per gallon, he said. If the Douglas County PUD is selling hydrogen at $10 per kilogram, it would cost $60 to fuel up the tractor.

“You’re going to get a lot more run time, you’re going to be following emissions regulations and it’s a lot cleaner,” Picazo said. “You get (the same), if not more performance out of it, depending on the size of the electric motor, and there’s little to no maintenance.”

‘Amazing young man’

Meek said it was “very cool as a teacher and advisor to watch an individual that literally takes an idea and in the four years of high school grew that idea into something that was pretty big, pretty cool.”

Washington farmers are getting pushed to consider alternative energies, she said. She could see Picazo becoming a consultant to help make those kinds of conversions.

“What an amazing young man,” said Dave Warren, founder of the Washington Green Hydrogen Alliance, who met Picazo after he built the go-cart. Warren is helping Picazo find a hydrogen-compatible fuel line hose for the tractor.

Warren encourages future employers to hire Picazo for their research and development or innovation units.

“The fact that (Picazo) himself designed a go-cart to run on hydrogen as a self-learner, picking people’s brains — the best engineers in the world are working on that right now, how to make hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicles, big trucks and buses,” Warren said.

The fact that Picazo did it while still in high school, “to me, that’s genius,’ Warren said. “I’m an engineer by training, and I’m in awe of what he’s done.”

FFA message

Meek encourages other FFA members to similarly think outside of the box.

“The message to advisors is, ‘Don’t hold them back,’” she said. “If you have a kid who comes to you with some crazy idea like Pedro did, you’ve just got to step back and let them go, give them the support they need and let them grow.”

“He knows all of the different alternative energies and he can give you all the reasons why hydrogen power is the way to go,” she said. “He’s done his research, he’s asked his questions, he’s gone out there and talked to people that are in the field doing it. Don’t hold anybody back. Even the craziest ideas can sometimes be something.”

Future plans

Picazo keeps the tractor at the King Agriculture Museum, which displays antique tractors,in Centralia. He hopes to connect with farmers for demonstrations and display the tractor at fairs and parades.

He has his own company, Picazo Industries, working on buildings under 200 square feet.

He plans to attend a technical college, go into wildland firefighting and work as a field mechanic. Picazo expects agriculture will turn to hydrogen more often.

“Once there’s actually somebody producing a hydrogen-powered tractor, I feel like farmers will find it a better alternative than letting their equipment charge all night, and then it dying in the middle of the day while they’re using it,” he said.

WESTERN INNOVATOR

Name: Pedro Picazo

Age: 18
Title: Founder, Picazo Industries

Hometown: Visalia, Calif.
Current location: Centralia, Wash.

Education: Centralia High School graduate

Family: Mom, Simona Carranza; dad, Pedro Picazo; two sisters, Daisy and Dania

Hobbies: Welding, framing and wrenching on vehicles

Video: Picazo was a finalist for Washington FFA’s Washington Star in Agriscience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0d5xYFnScY

Website: https://picazoindustries.com/