'Hot' fuel cells get cooler and cooler

Fuel-cell research using lower operating temperatures makes the future of lower-emission power more feasible for everything from cars to entire metropolitan areas

June 16, 2000
Web posted at: 12:41 p.m. EDT (1641 GMT)

By Environmental News Network staff

Fuel-cell technology is cool. It offers the promise of low-emission power generation for everything from cars to entire metropolitan areas. And Japanese researchers say they have built a fuel cell that runs efficiently at temperatures as low as 932 degrees Fahrenheit.

This temperature is very cool for fuel cells and means the cell can run on regular hydrocarbon fuels such as methane without an accumulation of carbon to clog the apparatus. A paper on the technology appears in today's issue of Science.

"What they got was very impressive performance at lower temperatures," said Raymond Gorte, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Gorte and colleagues also built a fuel cell that avoids carbon buildup. They reported the results March 16 in Nature.

Conventional solid oxide fuel cells extract electricity from hydrocarbon fuels by converting the hydrocarbons to hydrogen inside the cells. Hydrogen reacts with oxygen from the air in such a way that electrical power is generated.

Instead of relying on hydrogen for fuel, a single-chamber, solid-oxide fuel cell uses a flowing mixture of hydrocarbon and air

In conventional solid-oxide fuel cells, carbon atoms join together and clog the fuel cell instead of joining with oxygen to form carbon dioxide.

Gorte's team overcame this problem by developing a material that does not promote the formation of carbon-carbon bonds. Thus, the apparatus does not get fouled by carbon buildup.

The Japanese researchers, led by Takashi Hibino of the National Industrial Research Institute of Nagoya, developed a single-chamber fuel cell with unique materials that operates at temperatures cool enough to deter carbon buildup.

"In principle (the technology) could be applied to a regular type of fuel cell," said Gorte. "What they are doing is working at low enough temperatures that carbon buildup doesn't occur."

It may take several years of development to work out glitches and get the technology ready for industrial use, according to Subash Singhal, who heads the fuel cell research program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.

However, the Department of Energy recently launched a $35-million-a-year program known as the Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance to bring the technology to the marketplace. If successful, cool fuel cells that run on ordinary hydrocarbon fuels may be in operation within the decade.

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The National Industrial Research Institute of Nagoya
Science
Raymond Gorte
Fuel Cells 2000
National Fuel Cell Research Center

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