When I was working at the Environment and Energy Research Center (EERC) on the hydrogen fuel cell feasibility study, I was given the opportunity to make a few extra bucks helping out a lab scientist. He was studying different catalyst materials to see how efficiently they would reform ethanol into hydrogen.

My primary function was data entry, but I was present for much of the testing. When I was working with him, we used platinum or a platinum alloy. We setup the experiment and recorded the amount of hydrogen and catalyst weight loss at 15 – 30 minute intervals.

One day while we were running the experiment and chatting about places to eat around Grand Forks, our conversation started to drift around and we were laughing a lot and having a really pleasant time. For a time that was great and then we started feeling a bit boozed up, and then we realized it. We had an ethanol leak. We had to evacuate the lab after finding out we had a defective stopper on the ethanol bottle.