Fuel Cells
- Meera Naveen
- Oct 14, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 30
Hello everyone!
Today I'm going to talk about fuel cells, a concept that started to gain popularity right around 2007, sold to multiple consumers around the world for different reasons. Before it became commercial, it was used in NASA expeditions, military vehicles, to meet concerns about harmful emissions (changed priority from natural gas to fuel cells powered using hydrogen, an abundant resource), etc. They may or may not be a technology that revolutionizes the transportation industry.
So what are fuel cells exactly?
Although they only started gaining traction in the 2000s, the concept itself is as old as the early 1800s, specifically 1839. A chemist/physicist by the name of William Grove experimented and showed that an electric charge could be created from an electrochemical reaction between the two elements hydrogen and oxygen “over a platinum catalyst.” (Fuel Cells Works) In simple terms, this finding eventually developed into ‘fuel cells’, a portable innovation similar to a battery (that doesn’t need to charge) that consists of a negative and positive electrode around an electrolyte. It supplies power as long as fuel (i.e hydrogen) is provided. It’s important to note too that when you’re using a hydrogen fuel cell, the only byproduct of the system is water, not carbon dioxide or any other harmful gas.
Later on, the same concept was attempted with coal gas, but that did not gain as much attention.
5kW and 15 kW (kilo-watt) systems were designed out of this concept, and were soon inputted and invested in by NASA space missions and to power secret military tasks/transportation.
In the 1990s, there was much investment in transportation, especially automobiles/cars, powered by fuel cells.
Today, fuel cells can provide “power to homes and businesses, keeping critical facilities like hospitals, grocery stores, and data centers up and running” moving all sorts of transportation. (Fuel Cell Basics)
All in all, fuel cells are really something I have heard of only this past year but seem to have potential for the future. As the economy is growing back and making space for new ideas, fuel cells have an opportunity to grow as well, reaching out especially to the increasing number of climate-conscious citizens. Whether they might be a good choice or not is up to you, but innovations like these are all attempts at a better future for all:-)
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