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    Fuel Cells
    Fuel Cells
    Fuel Cells
    Ebook178 pages2 hours

    Fuel Cells

    By Paul Breeze

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Fuel Cells is a concise, up-to-date and accessible guide to the evolution of the use of electrochemistry to generate power. The author provides a comprehensive exploration of the history of fuel cells, the environmental concerns which came into prominence in the 1980s and the economic factors associated with this method of power generation.

    Examples discussed include Alkaline Fuel Cells, Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cells, Molton Carbonate Fuel Cells and Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, making this a valuable and insightful read for those in the power generation market and those in electrochemistry, such as engineers, managers and academics.

    • Explores multiple variations of fuel cell technology and evaluates their cost and application
    • Provides detailed historical context, beginning in 1839 with the development of electrolysis
    • Discusses the most up-to-date advancements and methods of fuel cell technology today
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAcademic Press
    Release dateFeb 9, 2017
    ISBN9780128095157
    Fuel Cells
    Author

    Paul Breeze

    Paul Breeze is a journalist and freelance science and technology writer and consultant in the United Kingdom. He has specialised in power generation technology for the past 30 years. In addition to writing Power Generation Technologies, Second Edition, he has contributed to journals and newspapers such as The Financial Times and The Economist and has written a range of technical management reports covering all the aspects of power generation, transmission and distribution.

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      Book preview

      Fuel Cells - Paul Breeze

      India

      Chapter 1

      An Introduction to Fuel Cells

      Abstract

      The fuel cell is an electrochemical device, similar to a battery, that exploits a chemical reaction to provide electrical power. In contrast to a battery, the chemicals needed to generate the power are provided externally. For most fuel cells the reactants are hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is usually made from natural gas while air supplies the oxygen. Early adopters of fuel cell technology included NASA which used them for its Gemini and Apollo programs. However, these fuel cells were very expensive to manufacture. It was not until the 1990s that a commercial fuel cell was launched. Today, there are six major fuel cell types under development or available commercially. Global generating capacity based on fuel cells is between 1000 MW and 2000 MW.

      Keywords

      Fuel cell; hydrogen; oxygen; natural gas; electrochemical device; hydrogen economy; phosphoric acid fuel cell; alkaline fuel cell

      The fuel cell is an electrochemical device, similar in concept to a battery, that exploits a chemical reaction in order to generate electricity. Batteries are designed as portable sources of electrical power and so they must carry all the chemicals necessary to provide that power within them. Once those chemicals are exhausted, the battery can no longer provide any power. A fuel cell, in contrast, contains no chemical fuel itself. It simply provides a reaction chamber in which the fuel cell reaction takes place. The actual reactants that are needed to generate the electricity are provided externally. So long as there is a source of the chemical fuel, the fuel cell can generate power. Some fuel cells are still designed to be portable, like batteries. However, many are designed for stationary applications and have very limited portability.

      In order for a chemical reaction to be able to provide electrical power, it must be a reaction that releases energy as it proceeds. Such reactions are called exothermic. When a reaction of this type takes place under normal conditions, by mixing the ingredients together in a test tube for example, this energy is released in the form of heat. By manipulation of the reaction conditions, the battery and the fuel cell both release most of that energy as electrical energy instead of heat energy.

      There are a wide variety of exothermic chemical reactions that have proved suitable for battery construction, reactions such as that between lead and sulfuric acid that forms the basis of the lead-acid battery used to start motor vehicles. Fuel cells, however, virtually all rely on a single reaction, that between hydrogen and oxygen to produce water. (The one variation involves a reaction between methanol and oxygen that produces carbon dioxide and water.)

      The simplicity of the fuel cell reaction and the benign reaction product, water, makes the fuel cell extremely attractive environmentally. In addition, the fact that the driving force is electrochemical rather than thermodynamic means that fuel cells are not limited by heat-engine physics and are potentially more efficient than most alternative fuel-based forms of power generation. So while the best efficiency for a simple heat engine is that achieved by the diesel engine at around 50% fuel-to-electricity efficiency, the best fuel cell can reach 60%. In fact the theoretical maximum efficiency for a fuel cell operating at room temperature is 83%.

      While the fuel cell reaction is simple, the practical realization of a fuel cell is not so straight-forward. In the first place the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen will not take place spontaneously at ambient temperature,¹ so the reaction must be catalyzed in low temperature fuel cells. In addition, while the oxygen that is required by a fuel cell can be provided from air, there is no ready source of hydrogen today. This means that the hydrogen for a fuel cell must be manufactured and in most fuel cells this is achieved by carrying out a process called reforming with natural gas. Reforming natural gas produces hydrogen but also generates carbon dioxide so that one of the clear environmental benefits of the fuel cell reaction, that it produces only water, is no longer applicable. In addition, the reforming of natural gas has an energy penalty, so that a fuel cell using natural gas is not as efficient as one that is fueled with pure hydrogen.

      In the future there may be ready sources of hydrogen available. In the meantime, fuel cells remain environmentally attractive because of other advantages they possess. The device itself has no moving parts making it inherently quiet and relatively maintenance free. (Some fuel cell systems require pumps which will generate noise.) And even when fueled with natural gas the fuel cell generates little in the way of atmospheric or other pollutants excepting carbon dioxide. This makes it easy to site fuel cell power plants in urban areas where systems based on rotating machines such as gas turbines, steam turbines, or reciprocating engines are often less suitable.

      While fuel cells offer some major advantages over other power generation technologies, one factor has held them back commercially, their cost. The principle of the fuel cell has been known since the first half of the 19th century but it was not until the middle of the 20th century that a practical fuel cell was built. The first cells were very efficient alkaline fuel cells. These demonstrated the potential for fuel cell technology but also highlighted its weakness. In order to make a fuel cell work, it was necessary to provide a catalyst that was formed from a very expensive material such as platinum. Partly as a result of this, the first fuel cells proved prohibitively expensive to make and

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