In what way is Physics connected with fuel cells?

Question

I need to do an oral presentation at school howver I only seem to come across with websites explainig topics about chemestry processes that occur in fuel cells. What I really need is something about physics

Answer 1

Fuel cells cannot be designed by chemistry alone, there are many factors in which physics must play a role, such as properties of charged particles, current transfer, fluids, diffusion, mass transfer, heat transfer, thermoelastic stress, involving thermodynamics, electrochemistry, fluid dynamics, membrane physics, even mechanics of stress. For example, how do things flow through a membrane with a certain size of porosity and structure? Especially when we mix charged ions in the fluids, which may be subject to electric fields? That's a complicated problem of physics, not chemistry. The concept of fuel cells is easy to explain chemically but very hard to design an efficient one without using physics.

Here's a link to a real company developing real fuel cells, you'll see what I mean:

Answer 2

The real physics here involves electricity. In a hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen combines with oxygen, and gives off two electrons that are conducted to a battery or whatever it is powering.