Fuel Cell Technology :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

Fuel kiosk TechnologyFuel Cells are a hot topic these days between the soon to come render cell cars thatToyota and Honda plan on unveiling this year and the $1.2 billion president scrubbingannounced he would dedicate to fuel cell research during his State of the Union address.The to the lowest degree efficient of these electrochemical energy converters are at least as efficient asinternal burning at the stake engines and many are doubly as efficient when using specialtechniques. Exhaust from fuel cells is highly clean, often consisting only of water.Although some use hydrocarbons, fuel cells give off around one one-hundredth of thepollutants given off by an internal combustion engine using the same amount of fuel(Fuel Cell Technology Handbook). Unfortunately some engineering and infrastructureproblems, especially costs, are keeping fuel cells from commercial viability right now.A Brief History of Fuel Cell TechnologyThe ideas behind fuel cells have existed for around one hundre d and sixty years.Sir William Grove is cited as the premier person to think that one could produce a current byreversing the electrolysis of water (SAE.org). However, it was until fifty years later thatthe enclosure fuel cell was coined by two researchers, Charles Langer and Ludwig Mond,trying to invent the first viable fuel cell fueled by coal gas (SAE.org). The engineering sciencelay dormant for most of the early twentieth century because of great advances in the useof internal combustion engines. It wasnt until 1959 that practical fuel cells were firstdemonstrated. NASA quickly took interest in the technology for the Apollo missions andsince there has been a renaissance in research and development of fuel cells. Currently,there are on the rules of order of hundreds of fuel cell generators in operation world wide, citiessuch as L.A., Chicago, and New York, own fuel cell powered public transit vehicles, andboth Honda and Toyota plan on making fuel cell powered car commercially availablewithin one year (fuelcells.org).How a Fuel Cell WorksA fuel cell is an energy converter that uses electrochemical energy to create anelectric current. Because they use electrochemistry for power, fuel cells are often likenedto batteries that convey on fuel. This description is not a bad one, but to be more precise, afuel cell creates direct current by ionizing a fuel and then moving those ions through acircuit. The three main components are the anode (negatively charged piece), cathode(positively charge piece), and electrolyte (medium for the transfer of ions). Fuel,typically hydrogen, is ionized at the anode by a catalyst (substance that can change aninteraction, but does not change the chemistry of it).