Sunday 29 January 2012

Hydrogen Fuel Cells


Wind, solar biomass, and water are not he only sources of clear energy. Other energy are the hydrogen fuel cells.
Hydrogen is a flammable gas, which, when burned with oxygen, produces harmless water vapour. Combining oxygen with hydrogen is a clean, efficient was to make huge amounts of both heat and electricity.
Instead of burning the hydrogen is the presence of oxygen, fuel cells allow the two gases to pass near each other on opposite sides of a thin membrane. The chemical interaction of oxygen and hydrogen  across this membrane produces  an electric charge, similar to that produced by a regular alkaline battery. But unlike the battery, which goes dead after the chemicals inside it are unsed up, the fuel cell continues to produce electricity as long as it receives fresh supplies of air and hydrogen. The only product of the process is water, which the fuel cell releases as steam.
The biggest difficulty faced by engineers designing fuel cells is figuring out how to store and handle the hydrogen gas safely. Hydrogen is composed of extremely tiny molecules that can squeeze out of most materials normally used to contain gases.
In the future, hydrogen gas can be manufactured in large quantities from ordinary water at solar power production facilities.
This is a hydrogen fuel cell car.

1 comment:

RMM said...

Interesting. Thanks

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