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Fuel Cells |
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| What is it? |
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| The principle of the fuel cell was discovered by Swiss scientist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1838. Understanding the principle, the first fuel cell was developed by Welsh scientist Sir William Grove. In 1959 that British engineer Francis Thomas Bacon successfully developed a 5 kW stationary fuel cell. Parallely , a team led by Harry Ihrig built a 15 kW fuel cell tractor for Allis-Chalmers that was demonstrated across the US at state fairs. |  | | | | |
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| |  | Fuel cells could be the next generation energy-saving technology to generate electrical power for our homes and cars. The biggest advantage of fuel cell is that it makes power more efficiently and with less pollution. A fuel cell typically converts the chemical energy of its fuel into electricity with an efficiency of about 50%. | |
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 | Fuel cells are ideally emission-free as compared to common fuels such as methane or natural gas that generate carbon dioxide. The problem is that coal is a relatively dirty energy source, which creates lot of pollution and wastage. Fuel cells on the other hand convert the chemicals hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in turn produce electricity with very little pollution. | |
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| The other advantage of a fuel cell is that in comparison to a battery it doesn't go dead. Battery either has to be thrown or recharged, whereas fuel cell goes on and on. In a fuel cell, chemicals constantly flow into the cell and thus the electricity flows out of the cell. Many fuel cells in use today use hydrogen and oxygen as the chemicals. The fuel cell will compete with many other types of energy conversion devices, including the gas turbine of power plant, the gasoline engine in cars and autos and the batteries in computers and other hand held devices. Fuel cells are expected to compete with combustion engines and gasoline engines for the simple reason that they do the task of producing electricity and do the mechanical work at the same time. |
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| A fuel cell provides a DC (direct current) voltage, which could be used to power electrical appliances like motors. Fuel cells are classified based on the type of electrolyte that they use. The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is one of the interesting fuel cell, which will help power cars, buses and homes. Some of the other fuel cells are biological fuel cell, alkaline fuel cell, Direct Borohydride fuel cell, Direct Methanol fuel cell, Phosphoric acid fuel cell and solid oxide fuel cell. |
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| A typical fuel cell produces only 0.8 volts, which is not enough to and thus the cells are layered and combined stack to create greater amount of electicity. The number of cells used is usually greater than 45 and varies with design. |
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| | | The oxygen required for a fuel cell comes from the air. However, the hydrogen is not so readily available. Hydrogen has some limitations that make it impractical for use in most applications. Hydrogen is difficult to store and distribute, so it would be much more convenient if fuel cells could use fuels that are more readily available. A device called a reformer addresses this problem. A reformer turns hydrocarbon or alcohol fuels into hydrogen, which is then fed to the fuel cell. Unfortunately, reformers are not perfect. They generate heat and produce other gases besides hydrogen. They use various devices to try to clean up the hydrogen, but even so, the hydrogen that comes out of them is not pure, and this lowers the efficiency of the fuel cell. | |
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