what are fuel cells ...send me more details ?

Question

technology

Answer 1

A fuel cell is sort of like a battery - except a battery stores charge and a fuel cell generates it. The battery doesn't get it's main 'stuff' replenished, but a fuel cell does.

Here's a link below that does a good job explaining it...

2nd Link - An explanation of 'The Myth of the Hydrogen Economy' - an explanation of the physics behind using Hydrogen for energy. Sorry conspiracy theorists, President Bush cannot change the Laws of Physics. GENERATING Hydrogen costs energy - it's currently bound up with other chemicals, not floating around freely. You have to spend energy to break it out, compress it, transport it, then store it in your car in order to get that 'pollution free' energy out of it again. It's a net-loss overall.

Orion

Answer 2

Fuels are devices in which gas or liquid fuels combine chemically to generate electricity. fuels cells can produce twice as much electricity as an ordinary generator can, from a given amount of fuel. the fuel cells in which hydrogen and oxygen are used are known as hydrogen and oxygen fuel cells. In the fuel cell, hydrogen is used as a fuel and oxygen as an oxidiser. also no combustion takes place, so it causes no pollution. But they are very expensive to produce.

Answer 3

The thing that the governments/Opec do not want you to know about...

One of the most common at the moment is a liquid-hydrogen cell, and the only "pollutant" it creates is H20 (Water!)

This technology could be perfected within less than 10 years, but Mr. Bush won't let that happen...

Answer 4

Energy sources, large battery is one of them.

Term came in to used during, space exploration. Radiological batteries were call Fuel cell to make sure they can be understood that they were not ordinary batteries, but term is used for any energy storage systems now a days but it does implies larger sources of energy storage units.

Answer 5

The principle of the fuel cell was discovered by German scientist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1838 and published in the January 1839 edition of the "Philosophical Magazine".[4] Based on this work, the first fuel cell was developed by Welsh scientist Sir William Robert Grove in 1843. The fuel cell he made used similar materials to today's phosphoric-acid fuel cell. It wasn't until 1959 that British engineer Francis Thomas Bacon successfully developed a 5 kW stationary fuel cell. In 1959, a team led by Harry Ihrig built a 15 kW fuel cell tractor for Allis-Chalmers which was demonstrated across the US at state fairs. This system used potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte and compressed hydrogen and oxygen as the reactants. Later in 1959, Bacon and his colleagues demonstrated a practical five-kilowatt unit capable of powering a welding machine. In the 1960s, Pratt and Whitney licensed Bacon's U.S. patents for use in the U.S. space program to supply electricity and drinking water (hydrogen and oxygen being readily available from the spacecraft tanks).

UTC's Power subsidiary was the first company to manufacture and commercialize a large, stationary fuel cell system for use as a co-generation power plant in hospitals, universities and large office buildings. UTC Power continues to market this fuel cell as the PureCell 200, a 200 kW system.[5] UTC Power continues to be the sole supplier of fuel cells to NASA for use in space vehicles, having supplied the Apollo missions and currently the Space Shuttle program, and is developing fuel cells for automobiles, buses, and cell phone towers; the company has demonstrated the first fuel cell capable of starting under freezing conditions with its proton exchange membrane automotive fuel cell.

In 2006 Staxon introduced an inexpensive OEM fuel cell module for system integration. In 2006 Angstrom Power, a British Columbia based company, began commercial sales of portable devices using proprietary hydrogen fuel cell technology, trademarked as "micro hydrogen."

Technology-

In the archetypal example of a hydrogen/oxygen proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), a proton-conducting polymer membrane, (the electrolyte), separates the anode and cathode sides.

On the anode side, hydrogen diffuses to the anode catalyst where it later dissociates into protons and electrons. The protons are conducted through the membrane to the cathode, but the electrons are forced to travel in an external circuit (supplying power) because the membrane is electrically insulating. On the cathode catalyst, oxygen molecules react with the electrons (which have traveled through the external circuit) and protons to form water. In this example, the only waste product is water vapor and/or liquid water.

In addition to pure hydrogen, there are hydrocarbon fuels for fuel cells, including diesel, methanol (see: direct-methanol fuel cells) and chemical hydrides. The waste products with these types of fuel are carbon dioxide and water.

The construction of the Low temperature fuel cell PEMFC: Bipolar plate as electrode with in-milled gas channel structure, fabricated from conductive plastics (enhanced with carbon nanotubes for more conductivity); Porous carbon papers; Reactive layer, usually on the polymer membrane applied; polymer membrane.The materials used in fuel cells differ by type. The electrode/bipolar plates are usually made of metal, nickel or carbon nanotubes, and are coated with a catalyst (like platinum, nano iron powders or palladium) for higher efficiency. Carbon paper separates them from the electrolyte. The electrolyte could be ceramic or a membrane.

A typical fuel cell produces about 0.86 volt. To create enough voltage, the cells are layered and combined in series and parallel circuits to form a fuel cell stack. The number of cells used is usually greater than 45 but varies with design..