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Fuel Cells

David Wilkinson, Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Fuel cells will play an important role in energy sustainability and global climate change, two of the biggest issues for the 21st century. Fuel cells are poised at roughly the same place as personal computers were a few decades ago, and we’ll soon see them in handheld electronic devices, PCs and other portable devices.

There are significant global environmental and supply issues with existing energy paths today . Global emission and fuel regulations, global fuel and power structure, energy security, and cost are driving new technology and non-conventional approaches. Fuel cells will play a significant role in the strategy to effect positive global change, increase fuel efficiency and decrease dependency on traditional fossil fuels. The fuel cell is the primary energy conversion device in most of these clean energy pathways and it is two to three times more efficient than an internal combustion engine in converting fuel to power. A fuel cell produces electricity, water and heat using fuel and oxygen in the air.

Technical progress as well as investments in fuel cells for transportation, stationary, portable, and micro fuel cell applications has been dramatic in recent years. The present view is very optimistic for fuel cell power generation and the status is presently at the field trial level, or early commercialization stage, moving into volume commercialization. The first commercial mass markets for fuel cells will be for handheld electronic devices, PCs and other portable devices. Companies such as Toshiba are presently commercializing such microfuel cell in the power range of a few milliwatts to a few hundred watts This fuel cell technology has significant advantages over batteries in terms of smaller size , lighter weight, easy to replace fuel cartridges, no self-discharge, and a significantly longer supply of power.

Fuel cells and fueling infrastructure, particularly for hydrogen, are key to a long-term solution to global energy issues. Many of the benefits of fuel cells are societal. However, fuel cells will need to be competitive on an economic and consumer basis with the established and highly developed internal combustion engine and other forms of power generation. Although there has been significant technical progress major technical gaps still remain. Next generation advances in fuel cell technology will close many of the significant technology gaps that exist today in the areas of performance, reliability, durability, operational flexibility and cost reduction.

Today, fuels cells are only a component of a much larger energy system. The next generation approach will involve simplifying the overall fuel cell system and energy pathway by collapsing many of the system and fueling requirements and functions into the fuel cell stack. Key conventional fuel cell components such as the membrane will be integrated with other components or eliminated. Design will be from the nanoscopic scale to the macroscopic scale, with validated and predictive models allowing virtual design and testing. Fuel cell based energy systems of the future will be flexible enough to accommodate a large range of fuel sources and operating conditions, and thereby support regional fuel supply strengths. Different fuels will be used directly with the fuel cell eliminating the need for fuel processing and significant purification. It can be expected that future fuel cell energy systems will not only perform better but will not look anything like the conventional systems of today.

Given the urgency of national and global issues concerning patterns of energy consumption and the environmental issues associated with energy use, fuel cells can be expected to have a significant impact on our lives in the 21 st century. They will be used in a broad range of applications, including our homes, vehicles and our electronic devices. Fuel cells are poised at roughly the same point at which personal computers were a few decades ago and will become as ubiquitous and indispensable as personal computers are today.