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Building Longer-Lived Fuel-Cell Stacks
An anonymous reader writes "Ballard Power Systems tells Wired that they have built a hydrogen fuel-cell stack that runs uninterrupted for 20,000 hours straight. But DuPont's Nafion membranes are very delicate, which makes the roadworthiness of fuel cells an issue."
this would make a cool UPS then
First of all, there's the huge problem of how you're supposed to store hydrogen onboard your car. I've seen several proposals, but they all have their drawbacks (fuel too heavy, tank required too heavy, too explosive, too dangerous in a crash, etc.). It seems that nobody's come up with a reasonable solution to this problem.
Secondly, there's the problem of fuel distribution. Unless and until there's some way to hook up a fair number of gas stations with a hydrogen fuel supply that these cars can use, nobody's going to buy into fuel cells being used for transportation. Of course, along with this problem is the one of how such an infrastructure upgrade will be financed in the first place without a demonstration of existing demand. The only way I can really see this chicken-and-egg problem being overcome is massive government investment in infrastructure upgrades. Sorry, libertarians, but the free market is going to fail here.
So, basically, we have a long way to go (if we ever even get there at all) before we see cars powered by fuel cells in general use. Until then, they're mostly a curiosity (and a very expensive one, at that.)
That's 2.25+ years. I'm wondering if they've been tested for the last 2 years, or if it just looks good on paper.
Well, one problem is GETTING hydrogen. As the article points out,
"And consumers of natural gas -- already the primary source of hydrogen for everything from hydrogenated foods to NASA rockets -- learned this week that natural-gas supplies are at their lowest levels in 25 years."
Hmmm...I'd think that researchers would be looking for economically viable and environmentally friendly ways of getting hydrogen from a very abundant source on this planet. Or maybe I'm just crazy.
My journal has hot
What I wonder about is what sort of power these things produce. Can they directly drive an electric car, or would they need a battery to handle surges during acceleration?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Not all fuel cells are nearly so fragile. I work for a company that produces military equipment. We researched fuel cell applications and in a demonstration actually put a bullet through one. They can be made to survive.
You would think, being as it's VERY simple to split oxygen and hydrogen, that someone would eventually build a giant solar array in the middle of the ocean, being as salt makes a good catalyst... but no. :)
However, if fuel cells were used to recharge the batteries, there would be significant reductions in emissions from the power-generation and transport industries.
Also, that appears to be a five year old letter to the magazine. A more recent article sums up all the alternatives for 'green' motoring. As another article from the same issue states, there are some countries where these alternatives make more sense - e.g. Iceland, rich in geothermal and hydroelectric energy, and with no fossil fuel reserves whatsoever.
One other thing to remember - you have a much higher concentration of voters in cities than in the countryside. Spreading that pollution thinly over a large area may look as bad to you as having it concentrated on busy roads, but to many of the people along the busy roads, not in their backyard is nearly as good as not at all.
I have around 6 different brands of solar PV panels, one make will operate with bullets through it, that's unisolar. My dealer has one at another installation that some nimrod put a slug through, it still functions perfectly fine, albeit at slightly reduced power.
Hopefully this fuel cell tech in the rugged sense will make it to the affordable civvie market, I am interested in them. I like the no noise no moving parts of electrical generation schemes. Well, I like ALL alternative energy, I just like stuff that doesn't break or wear out easy better.
I have thought about this too. I can see one big problem though. Long ago back in my pre-high school days I built a hydrolosis display where I had mixed a salt-water solution and placed two electrodes in the water and pumped DC through it to create two opposite charged nodes. Sure enough the water split easily. The PROBLEM was that as the water split into H and O the catalyst to the reaction (salt) began to built up on the nodes to the point that it greatly interfered with the reaction. I can't help but wonder how bad that would be if you did that on a large scale. You would have to have some sort of cleaning system to periodically clean away the catalyst.