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.

Comments

Photovoltaics: Band Diagram

In the previous post we discussed silicon, which is the most used material in photovoltaics. In this post, we introduce the band diagram, for which we will use silicon as an example. We will start our discussion of the band diagram with the Bohr model of the silicon atom. In semiconductor materials the outer shell of the atom, which is called the valence shell, is not completely filled. The outer shell of silicon contains 4 out of the possible 8 electrons, which we call valence electrons. As we discussed in the previous post, each silicon atom in a crystalline structure is bonded to four other silicon atoms. The bonds between the silicon atoms are called covalent bonds. These bonds actually consist of two valence electrons that are shared by two silicon atoms. All valence electrons are fixed in the lattice, forming covalent bonds, and are therefore immobile. However, at a temperature above absolute zero, thermal energy is supplied to these miconductor and some of the vale...

Watching videos on the Internet also harms the environment

Surprisingly, even the videos we watch on the Internet have an impact on the environment. A new report indicates that the internet is one of the top "villains" in the digital sector's carbon footprint, which now accounts for 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This share could double by 2025, leaving the digital sector on a par with road transport, as energy consumption in this sector is increasing at the rate of 9% per year. Published by the French research website The Shift Project, the report "Climate Crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video" quantifies the impact of Internet video (VoD, "tubes", pornography, social networks and others) on the environment and the global climate. The study shows that, within all Internet data, online videos account for about 60 percent of the stream, or the largest volume of greenhouse gas emissions in the industry, with about 300 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e). Of this total emission,...

I-V Characteristic of a Solar Cell

Now that we know a bit about the physical processes behind photovoltaic energy conversion, let’s take a look at the device that does this, a solar cell. In the next few posts, we will go deep into all the operating principles of solar cells. We will discuss the semiconductor physics and optics governing their behavior and you will really get a sense of how solar cells work. Nevertheless, let’s start by trying to understand an important aspect for any electrical component, the current-voltage or “i-V” characteristic of the solar cell. Here we see a basic solar cell schematic. There are many different components and layers and you will become familiar with the properties and purposes of all these layers throughout the blog. All you need to know for this post is that a solar cell can take energy from illumination, and convert it into electrical energy in an external circuit. This post’s objective is to answer ‘what’. You will need to go through the rest of the course to u...

The Environmental Engineering Hub

Search This Blog