Originally published April 11 2005
New fuel cell design uses gasoline to produce more power than internal combustion engine
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Researchers at Northwestern University have designed a fuel cell that runs on, of all things, gasoline. By designing a fuel cell that produces hydrogen from gasoline, it does not rely on separate hydrogen fueling stations to get the fuel it needs to run. Instead, it combines the processes of hydrogen production and energy conversion into one unit. This is actually step forward, according to researchers, as the fuel cell is significantly more energy efficient than a standard internal combustion engine running on gasoline. In fact, the 50 percent gasoline-to-electricity efficiency is even better than the 32 percent efficiency found in the best hybrid cars.
Until there are hydrogen fueling stations along all our roads, however, researchers are trying to make fuel cell advances for what we already have---thousands and thousands of gasoline stations.
At that temperature these cells can convert some fossil fuels such as natural gas and propane to hydrogen and then to electricity.
But for gasoline and diesel, the hydrogen extraction has to be done in a separate system, since feeding the fuel directly to the fuel cell causes carbon buildup, which makes the cell fizzle out.
In the Northwestern University design, which was published in the online version of the journal Science on 31 March, the researchers use a special catalyst to re-form the liquid fuel inside the fuel cell without any carbon deposits.
This eliminates the need and cost of an external re-former system, an especially useful trick when designing fuel-cell-powered cars.
"We've taken a re-forming plant and a fuel cell and put them right together," says Scott Barnett, a professor in Northwestern's Materials Science and Engineering department and the lead researcher of this project.
A hydrocarbon fuel is fed into the nickel-based anode, where it is oxidized, resulting in water, carbon dioxide, heat, and free electrons.
At the cathode, which is fed with air, the electrons combine with oxygen to create oxygen ions that diffuse through the electrolyte to the anode.
Using thermodynamic calculations, the researchers show that this heat increases the overall gasoline-to-electricity efficiency of the fuel cell to about 50 percent.
Using the cell's own heat for re-forming is certainly a good development, says Romesh Kumar, manager of the fuel-cell department at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill.
One drawback of the catalyst layer is that it reduces the rate at which the fuel reaches the anode, decreasing power density over the long run.
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