oreoaccessories.blogg.se - Hydrogen fuel cell

3. Transportįuel cells can be used for a variety of transport applications, from automobiles to buses, ships, trains and aircraft. However, these systems can be costly and have a relatively short lifetime as well as taking up space with the need for a hot water storage tank. Cogeneration systems can reach 85% efficiency (of which 40-60% is electric). This is where fuel cell systems are used to generate power while the waste heat produced is used to heat buildings or power cooling systems. 2. Cogenerationįuel cells can be made even more efficient through cogeneration. Ideal conditions provide up to 99.9999% reliability, which is equal to less than one minute of downtime every six years. Fuel cells are particularly useful for remote locations due to their lack of moving parts, which means they are highly reliable and unlikely to fail. These range from homes to spacecraft and research stations.

Here is a selection of fuel cell uses: 1. Powerįuel cells act as power sources for a variety of commercial, industrial and residential applications. Hydrogen fuel cells offer a range of applications, from powering our homes and businesses to moving vehicles like cars, buses and trains and more. The flammable nature of hydrogen poses evident safety concerns for its widespread useįind out more about the pros and cons here There is a need to create the infrastructure to support the growth in fuel cell use, including retrofitting vehicles 4. The extraction of hydrogen for use in fuel cells can take a lot of energy to achieve, undermining the green benefits of fuel cell use 3.

There is work underway to find non-platinum catalyst approaches 2. The cost of fuel cells can be high given the use of platinum as one of the largest component materials. The challenges associated with fuel cells include: 1. There are a number of pros and cons associated with hydrogen fuel cells, the benefits include: Single fuel cells do not generate a large amount of electricity, so they are arranged into stacks to create enough power for their intended purpose, whether that is powering a small digital device or a power plant.įuel cells work like batteries but, unlike batteries, they will not run down or need recharging and can continue to produce electricity while the fuel source (in this case, hydrogen) is supplied.īeing comprised of an anode, cathode and an electrolyte membrane, there are no moving parts in a fuel cell, making them silent in operation and highly reliable.

After passing through the circuit and the membrane accordingly, the electrons and protons meet at the cathode where they combine with oxygen to produce heat and water as by-products.

The now positively charged protons pass through the membrane (or electrolyte) to the cathode, with the negatively charged electrons take a different route as they are forced through a circuit to generate electricity.

The hydrogen atoms are separated into protons and electrons at the anode.

Hydrogen atoms enter at the anode, while oxygen is fed to the cathode.

The process by which a fuel cell works can be summarised as follows: This can be improved further by with combined heat and power generators that use waste heat from the cell for heating or cooling applications. Because fuel cells use an electrochemical reaction rather than combustion, they can achieve higher efficiencies than with traditional energy production methods. Other types of fuel cell system include those that use hydrocarbon fuels like natural gas, biogas, or methanol. Cells that use pure hydrogen as fuel are completely carbon-free. One of the largest advantages of these fuel cells is that they generate electricity with very little pollution, as the hydrogen and oxygen used to generate the electricity combines to produce water as a by-product. Hydrogen acts as the basic fuel in a hydrogen fuel cell, but the cell also needs oxygen to work. The reaction to produce the electricity happens at these electrodes, with an electrolyte carrying electrically charged particles between them and a catalyst to speed up the reactions. Each fuel cell has two electrodes a negative anode and a positive cathode. Hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity using a chemical reaction.

National Structural Integrity Research Centre.

Structural Integrity Research Foundation.