Liquid design: Inside ACAL Energy’s fuel-cell stacks, the cathode is replaced with a platinum-free catalyst solution, which could reduce costs by 40 percent.
ACAL Energy
A platinum-free liquid cathode could cut fuel-cell costs by 40 percent.
Platinum remains the best material for speeding chemical reactions in hydrogen fuel cells, although the scarcity and cost of this element keep fuel cells from becoming more affordable and practical. Most alternative approaches involve simply replacing the platinum in the electrodes. Now a U.K. company called ACAL Energy has overhauled fuel cell design to reduce the amount of platinum used by 80 percent.
In a conventional fuel cell, platinum is embedded in porous carbon electrodes. ACAL's design replaces this with a solution containing low-cost molybdenum and vanadium as the catalyst. The resulting fuel cell works as well as a conventional one but should cost 40 percent less, the company says.
ACAL says its design gives power densities of 600 milliwatts per square centimeter at 0.6 volts. The benchmark value for automotive fuel cells is 900 milliwatts per square centimeter, says Hubert Gasteiger, a visiting professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. ACAL also claims that its fuel cell works unpressurized--adding pressure should increase the power density further.
The new system's power density could reach 1.5 watts per square centimeter, says Andrew Creeth, ACAL's co-founder and chief technology officer. "We believe that we're getting close to a marketable product," he says.
The company has already made a one-kilowatt system that it intends to sell to select customers next year, and the fuel cells should be available more widely in 2011. The plan is to first target the market for diesel generators with one- to 10-kW systems, then move on to larger applications such as home power generation and electric cars.
The platinum in a polymer membrane fuel cell--the top choice for generators and electric cars--splits hydrogen into ions and electrons at the anode, and helps these combine with oxygen at the cathode to form water. But platinum is in limited supply, costing $1,200 per ounce on average over the past three years. And the price is "likely to skyrocket if platinum became heavily used in fuel cells," adds Douglas MacFarlane, a chemistry professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, who is also developing alternative fuel-cell catalysts.
Today's fuel cells use 0.5 grams of platinum for each kilowatt of power they generate, Gasteiger says, but the long-term goal is to use less than 0.2 grams of platinum for each kilowatt.
A startup moves toward thin-film solid-oxide fuel cells suitable for practical devices.
New material could cut the use of expensive platinum by 80 percent.
A new anode allows solid-oxide fuel cells to function at lower temperatures.
This is great news and I agree it could be a great fit for our existing infrastructure if it's for direct methanol or ethanol/etc fuel cells. Please just tell me that we're not going to waste our time trying to create a new infrastructure and find ways to store hydrogen in dangerous, high pressure tanks that take up half our trunk. The water, electricity and other energy used to produce it as well as the energy required to compress it and put it in those high pressure tanks. The other small problem with hydrogen is that it comes from natural gas or petroleum products. That does not help solve anything at all.
Everyone keeps pretending that hydrogen is some "clean" power source and ignores the fact that it is nothing but an energy carrier separated from other sources which causes a lot of pollution and other side effects to produce, store, transport and use.
Go with a dmfc (direct methanol fuel cell) and all of these issues go away. Stop the hydrogen hype/lies.
Storing hydrogen in cars can be done safely
as WATER!
with two molecules of hydrogen for each oxygen, water is handy source of hydrogen.
It is impractical to electrolyse it in a car as then you need the energy stored somewhere else in the car to do this.
However, if you carry:
1) either aluminum or magnesium pellets
2) water
in your car you can get 400+ miles on a fuel cell from these, let me explain:
either metal can produce hydrogen on demand.
aluminum reacts violently with water at ROOM TEMPERATURE till all the water is gone, giving off hydrogen. The catch: a small amount of gallium must be present, to keep the normal action of aluminum to form a protective oxide skin from happening (the same reason why aluminum, unlike iron, doesn't rust).
Magnesium similarly reacts with water, albeit at temperature similar to today's car engines.
In either case, fueling stations, not unlike today's gas stations would either truck in unoxidized metal pellets, or re-process them by applying electricity generated locally, from any source, but ideally from renewable forms like solar thermal modules.
And instead of complaining about carrying hydrogen in your car being unsafe (it really is safer than today's gasoline as it quickly goes up into the air unlike gasoline which pools along the ground waiting for a spark), you'd have 25 gallons of water instead of gasoline or hydrogen in your tank.
the process to turn aluminum oxide that the cars will produce into aluminum, goes on daily and while taking alot of electricity, is as efficient as we can make it today as this is the basis for the aluminum industry. Aluminum is also one of the most abundant elements in the earth's crust.
Of course you don't just mix the two together. You feed the two ingredients to a small device that would produce hydrogen on demand, at the same speed as the car uses it, with a small reserve for increase usage such as acceleration.
magnesium:
http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/3498
aluminum:
http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html
http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage7355.html
The problem with the Aluminum Magnesium is that it requires about 5 times the energy received to remove the Oxygen from the particles. If in fact this fuel cell were to burn Methanol or Ethanol there would be no worries about storage, plenty of energy would fit in a tank. I, for one am excited about a hydrogen economy in the future. I would like to know more about that catalyst the Germans found that converts Methane to Methanol, anyone have any links there?
It's hard to get excited about hydrogen without any way of getting it save fossil fuel processes. The overall efficiency of these processes is lower than just burning gasoline and much lower that battery power.
The last administration decided to spend money on this on behalf of the oil and coal industry.
I think that this is the best potential solution yet that has come to my attention.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/business/8856647.System_could_double_range_of_electric_cars/
Vanadium Steel
If any metal could qualify as revolutionary, vanadium steel would be the strongest candidate to fit the description. No steel alloy has had quite the same impact on the industrial sector as this one.
vanadium steel alloys are the material of choice for building axles, gears and crankshafts. This alloy is valued among steel alloys for its durable nature. Adding a small amount of vanadium to steel instantly boosts the strength of the metal, its toughness and its resistance to heat. It makes vanadium steel one of the great tools for building stronger products.
Effectiveness Of Vanadium
The reason that vanadium is so effective in alloys is that it is a naturally strong and light weight mineral. In its natural state, vanadium is soft and ductile and it possesses excellent structural strength. Once it was first isolated by Henry E. Roscoe in 1867, it was only a matter of time before the metal sparked a revolution with all of its industrial uses.
Henry Ford (F 11.06 ?1.10%) pioneered the use of vanadium in steel alloys when he used it to construct the chassis in his Ford Model T car. Advertisements of the 1908 Model T boasted that vanadium steel was used throughout the entire car and no other steel could match its strength and endurance.
Ways Vanadium Is Processed
The Model T served as a catalyst to a revolution and use of vanadium steel spread to other industries in a short time. Ferrovanadium, a vanadium iron alloy, is the most common application of the metal. A great majority of the vanadium drawn from mining is converted into ferrovanadium. It is usually recovered from titanium-bearing magnetite and the ore is processed into a slag. This slag contains 20 to 24 percent vanadium pentoxide. Further refinement produces ferrovanadium which is 40 to 50 percent of the element.
Vanadium Industry Consumers
One thing that makes this steel alloy so revolutionary is the fact that it has so many uses. It can be combined with titanium and aluminum to produce a super strong alloy that is used in building jet engines and other parts on high-speed aircraft. Vanadium foil helps clad together titanium and steel. It can be combined with gallum to form a tape used in superconducting magnets.
Even on a chemical level it is supremely important. Vanadium pentoxide is an important component in ceramics and fosters production of sulfuric acid.
Durability is another component that makes vanadium steel so popular. From mining to processing, this light weight metal retains its resistance to things such as salt water, hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid that cause erosion and oxidation.
It is safe to say vanadium steel is one of the basic tools the industrial sector needs to survive.
http://www.vanadiumsite.com/steel/
Funny how the title reads NO platinum and the body then says it is just a reduction. Nothing terribly earth shaking about that. Thats been a continuing process for everyone involved in cell research.
Your comment about hydrogen is so true. It's the multiple TRILLIONS of dollars it would cost to create a viable hydrogen infrastructure. You can build a cheap gas bar with a couple of pumps for under a million but the same size hydrogen station is over $15 mill. Hydrogen cells are without question the most efficient and least polluting of all fuel cells and they are slowly getting even better. However the cost of hydrogen is still sky high cost quite a few times the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. A little over $22 the last time I knew for sure. There is a lot of research being done on hydrogen on demand generators. Success of those would let you just have a normal car instead of a around
town toy. The other thing to watch are the methanol and ethanol fuel cells. Good energy density on the fuels and almost no change in infrastructure to implement. Just have to ignore the outdated info on ethanol production techniques and use of food crops.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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338 Comments
Great news
fuel cells really would be a great help in reducing energy use and this seems like a step in the right direction to making them practical.
since some fuel cells can react simple fairly pure hydrocarbons in forms like methanol this would be a quick drop-in to existing automobile infrastructure. And the added bonus is that fuel cells are twice as efficient as internal combustion engines, so fuel usage would be halved for cars on the road.
we likely will be making methanol or ethanol for fuel cell cars from solar powered or other renewable sources and reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere in the process.
cars running on an electrical source, whether batteries with their limited range or fuel cells, which could get twice the range for the same amount of fuel compared to today's cars, are simpler in design which should translate to reduced operating costs. They should also reduce leaks from oil onto roads that current cars cause, as they don't have the circulating oil like today's cars, and seals that leak.
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