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The alkaline fuel cell (AFC) or hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell was designed and first demonstrated publicly by Francis Thomas Bacon in 1959. It was used as a primary source of electrical energy in the Apollo space program. [41] The cell consists of two porous carbon electrodes impregnated with a suitable catalyst such as Pt, Ag, CoO, etc.
Hydrogen may be used in fuel cells for local electricity generation or potentially as a transportation fuel. Hydrogen is produced as a by-product of industrial chlorine production by electrolysis. Although requiring expensive technologies, hydrogen can be cooled, compressed and purified for use in other processes on site or sold to a customer ...
Whereas the common PEM fuel cell, also called Low Temperature Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cell (LT-PEM), must usually be operated with hydrogen with high purity of more than 99.9 % the HT-PEM fuel cell is less sensitive to impurities and thus is typically operated with reformate gas with hydrogen concentration of about 50 to 75 %.
A hydrogen fuel cell power plant is a type of fuel cell power plant (or station) which uses a hydrogen fuel cell to generate electricity for the power grid.They are larger in scale than backup generators such as the Bloom Energy Server and can be up to 60% efficient in converting hydrogen to electricity.
Hydrogen is not a primary energy source, because it is not naturally occurring as a fuel. It is, however, widely regarded as an ideal energy storage medium, due to the ease with which electricity can convert water into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis and can be converted back to electrical power using a fuel cell or hydrogen turbine. [ 3 ]
Extremely expensive materials were used and the fuel cells required very pure hydrogen and oxygen. Early fuel cells tended to require inconveniently high operating temperatures that were a problem in many applications. However, fuel cells were seen to be desirable due to the large amounts of fuel available (hydrogen and oxygen). [citation needed]
Hydrogen is a common and easy to find element, given that each molecule of water has two atoms of hydrogen for every oxygen atom present. [10] Hydrogen can be separated from water via several means, including steam reforming (normally involving the use of fossil fuels) and electrolysis (which requires large amounts of electricity and is less commonly used).
The fuel cell has a high efficiency peak at low load, while at high load the efficiency drops. The hydrogen combustion engine has a peak at high load and can achieve similar efficiency levels as a hydrogen fuel cell. [34] From this, one can deduce that hydrogen combustion engines are a match in terms of efficiency for fuel cells for heavy duty ...