New Catalyst May Be a Boost For Fuel Cells

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the University of Houston (UH) have developed a new platinum-based catalyst for fuel cells that is at least four times more efficient and cheaper than existing catalysts. This discovery in fuel cell research may ease reliance on gasoline. According to the researchers, the active phase of the catalyst consists of nanoparticles with a platinum-rich shell and a core made of an alloy of copper, cobalt, and platinum. But it's not enough for this new catalyst to be more efficient and cheaper than a pure platinum one. It also needs to work for a long time — say, the life of a car. So far, the preliminary results look promising, but longer-term testing is needed before this kind of fuel cells can be used to power your car."

Comments

Re:OK, I've gotta ask

[morgan_greywolf]

Gotta be the name. Platinum credit cards, platinum blondes, platinum membership....

enough with the fuel cell

[SolusSD]

This technology has been 15 to 20 years off for the past 10 years. Improvements in battery technology are here, and cost would come down (much more quickly than fuel cells) if more companies jumped on the electric car bandwagon. We need more companies like this: www.teslamotors.com

Summary

[should_be_linear]

I extracted 4 key words from TFA : ...may...may...promising...testing.

RTFA: They crossed that $ threshold

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Even if this is a proven method, there's also a cost obstacle to overcome here.

The point of the article is that
  - the previous Platinum-based catalyst was about 6 times too expensive to be practical for an automotive application, while
  - this one is more than a factor of 6 cheaper, putting it in the running.

In other words they've crossed the affrordability threshold.

If the lifetime testing works out, no roadblocks show up, and something better doesn't come along and obsolete it before it gets deployed, expect this one to actually show up in cars.

Gasoline Fuel Cells

[Doc Ruby]

The breakthrough in fuel cells will come when they can deliver 50% or better efficiency from gasoline. Then the dinosaur egg will finally have hatched a chicken, which can then lay a chicken egg: other fuels that fuel cells, and their dependent motors/transmissions/etc, can use. That is a much more likely transition scenario than getting the fuels first, or switching to fuel cells and their fuels simultaneously.