| FuelCellStocks.Com Fuel Cell News August 29, 2005
New Hydrogen-Making Method Purdue University engineers announced Sunday they’ve developed a new way to produce hydrogen for fuel cells. The new method is cheaper than other approaches, and has a higher power density, which means it can generate more hydrogen with less material. The researchers, Evgeny Shafirovich, Victor Diakov, and Arvind Varma, say the technology could be used to automatically recharge batteries in laptops and other portable electronics.
“Our novel technology of hydrogen storage, combustible borohydride/metal/water mixtures, makes it possible to develop fuel cell power systems with high specific energy, high power density, safe reaction products and without any catalyst,” said Mr. Shafirovich. “Chargers based on this technology can dramatically increase portability of various electronic devices in consumer, industrial, medical, and military markets.”
As portable devices have become smaller and more power hungry, batteries have been unable to keep up. Fuel cells, which produce power by mixing fuel with air and water between a reactive film membrane in an electrochemical reaction, are seen as a potential solution. But micro fuel cells face many obstacles, such as safe packaging, temperature, and humidity management. Also, hydrogen and methanol are not allowed in airplane passenger cabins, distribution channels have not been set up, and cartridges have not been standardized.
However, the announcement by Purdue, which last week opened a research center to study future energy sources, helps to address one big challenge—fuel storage. Hydrogen is explosive, so it can’t easily be transported and stored as is. And other materials can be converted into hydrogen, but the conversion tends to be inefficient, requiring expensive catalysts and a lot of material to make a little bit of hydrogen.
The new technology includes a mixture of sodium borohydride, nanoscale-sized particles of aluminum, and water. A chemical reaction would ignite the material, producing hydrogen. The material requires no catalyst and converts 6.7 percent of the mixture to hydrogen, which is more efficient than alternative methods on the market, said Mr. Varma. Researchers hope to bring efficiency up to 10 percent. Mr. Shafirovich said they hadn’t calculated whether the current efficiency would be enough for a credit-card-sized cartridge to fully recharge a laptop battery.
The researchers said technology could lead to credit-card-sized cartridges.
The disposable cartridges would contain a number of pellets with the new
material, and would be inserted into laptops and other devices along with
a fuel cell and a rechargeable battery. When the battery needed to be
charged, a computer chip would activate one of the pellets in the cartridge
and the fuel cell would charge the battery. When all the pellets were
used up, the cartridge could be discarded and replaced. The researchers
hope to work with fuel cell manufacturers to develop an integrated power
system, including a fuel cell, cartridges, and other accessories.
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