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The
Hydrogen Economy is coming and
Fuel Cells are its Building Blocks
The Hydrogen Economy officially began on April 24, 2003 with the opening
of the world's first retail hydrogen filling station in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Just like coal replaced wood, and oil replaced coal, hydrogen will now
replace oil as the life blood of planet earth.
The consensus among geologists is that oil production
has peaked, or will soon peak, and will then begin to decline at a time
when the demand for oil on earth is exploding as developing countries,
especially China and India, are modernizing and industrializing at an
incredible, oil gobbling rate. Put it this way. The United States, with
4% of the world’s population, presently uses 25% of the oil pumped
on earth. If China becomes industrialized to the same extent as the
U.S., it will use ALL of the oil currently pumped on earth! Throw in
India and the rest of the developing world and we have a coming economic
nightmare.
It will not get better, it will only get worse. In 1998,
oil was $10 a barrel. In September of 2004, oil was $42.00 a barrel.
In September of 2005, it hit $70.00 a barrel. In July 2008, it hit $147
a barrel and the United States alone is poised to transfer $700 billion
to the Middle East this year, marking the largest transfer of wealth
of human history.
The oil markets have entered a ‘super spike' period
and the four greatest economies on earth--the United States, Japan,
Europe, and China--all exist at the mercy of foriegn oil reserves held
by countries, often unfriendly to all of us. All it would take for an
economic disaster is the overthrow of the royal family in Saudi Arabia,
a land rampant with fundamentalist Islamics who hate both non-Islamic
peoples and the royal family.
Then there is the environment.. A running hydrogen fuel
cell is environmentally perfect. It produces electricity and exhausts
nothing but pure water and heat.
Our
best hope for the future is fuel cells
and the hydrogen economy
We need the Hydrogen Economy for two reasons: First, to
take earth’s life blood out of unfriendly hands. Second, to clean
up our environment. The two are mutually exclusive.
At issue is the production of hydrogen. The good news
is that hydrogen is ubiquitous, it exists everywhere on earth and it
is impossible for any one people or geographic region to monopolize
it. The bad news is that hydrogen does not exist by itself--it must
be separated from a hydrocarbon. Presently, the most cost effective
way to produce hydrogen is to steam reform it from natural gas, a process
that vents carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is the only reasonable
way to produce hydrogen in the near future, but the ultimate goal is
to use renewable energy to produce hydrogen. We’ll discuss the
alternatives and the progress to date later in the section on hydrogen.
Meanwhile, the reality is that dependence from Middle Eastern Oil must
take precedence over the environment in the near term production of
hydrogen. Fuel Cells are the Building Blocks of the Hydrogen Economy
A fuel cell is essentially a battery that can be refueled,
that’s all you really need to know. Basically, what takes place
inside a fuel cell is electrolysis in reverse. Electrolysis, sending
a jolt of electricity into water, splits water molecules into its components:
two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. In a fuel cell, hydrogen and
oxygen are combined to produce electricity.
A typical fuel cell has four primary components: an anode
(negative electrode), a cathode (positive electrode), a catalyst and
an electrolyte. Hydrogen gas pumped into the anode strikes the catalyst—typically
a thin layer of platinum—and splits into hydrogen protons and
electrons. On the opposite side of the fuel cell, oxygen enters the
cathode. Sandwiched between the anode and cathode is a thin electrolyte
membrane that looks like kitchen plastic wrap. It permits the positively
charged protons to pass through to the cathode but blocks the negatively
charged electrons—which are forced to flow through an external
circuit to form an electric current. At the cathode, the electrons and
hydrogen protons combine with oxygen to form water.
A single fuel cell produces only a small amount of electricity.
To run something as big as a car, engineers stack hundreds of fuel cells
together in a series. Producing usable electrical power from a fuel
cell requires more than just a fuel cell stack. A fuel cell system includes
many components for functions such as: injecting fuel gases; managing
a critical water balance; conditioning the power output and monitoring
and controlling all the required system parameters (e.g., temperature
and pressure).
To see an animation of a fuel cell, click here
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