History of Fuel Cells

Although fuel cells were not investigated much during the 1800s and 1900s, the credit for the invention of the first fuel cells goes to William Grove. Intensive research on the topic began in the 1960s with NASA and only recently has commercialization of the technology begun to be conceivable. The image below is a summary of the history of the fuel cells.

Before William Grove had invented the first fuel cell in 1839, William Nicholson and Anthony Carlislie came up with the process of using electricity of break water into hydrogen and oxygen in 1800. Willian, then, based his first fuel cell on their discovery. The device, called the gas battery or "Grove cell", was a combination of "electrodes in a series circuit, with separate platinum electrodes in oxygen and hydrogen submerged in a dilute sulfuric acid electrolyte solution" and it generated 12 amps of current at about 1.8 volts.

NASA began research on fuel cells for Project Gemini, which employed them only after some modifications by GE (the first fuel cells had problems with internal cell contamination and leakage of oxygen through the membrane).

GE continued their research on fuel cells, where they eventually came up with the PEM type fuel cells in the 1970s, and that led to the U.S. Navy Oxygen Generating Plant. The British Royal Navy also used PEM Fue Cells for their submarines in the 1980s and during the last decades, this technology has been researched for several economical sectors like transportation and portable power markets.

Source:

SPIEGEL, Colleen. PEM Fuel Cell Modeling and Simulation Using MATLAB^®. Burlington, MA, USA: Academic Press, 2008. 440 p.

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