3 ms·

How is this not on the front page? If we have a low cost catalyst then Hydrogen Fuel cells become affordable and are well placed to disrupt how the world think

How is this not on the front page? If we have a low cost catalyst then Hydrogen Fuel cells become affordable and are well placed to disrupt how the world thinks about energy. This is an exciting time to be alive!

barney54 11y ago
How do hydrogen fuel cells disrupt the world? The fuel for today's fuel cells is natural gas. How would these be any different?
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Because some people believe fuel cells are better tech than batteries. It's not true of course, but that's where the belief comes from. Batteries store energy. Fuel cells are solid state engines, not storage systems.
jws 11y ago
Energy breakthrough exhaustion. There are just too many breathless press releases and articles and they mostly drift away to join the aggregate body of scientific knowledge. Way outside my field here, but this one doesn't address cost of production, only cost of components. Platinum is about $12/kW with current technology fuel cells. In a quick googling I found a 1kW fuel cell for $6000. It is safe to assume the platinum cost is fiddling about the edges. Combine with the hunch that creating large structures out of carbon nanotubes with nickel nanoparticles arranged in a certain way isn't going to be free, and my interest ebbs quickly. The good news of this article is that if we do somehow end up in a future where fuel cells are widely used, we will need not be constrained by the world supply of platinum… but that isn't front page news.
david-given 11y ago
I thought the problem with hydrogen as a fuel was storage --- liquification requires cryogenic temperatures and is very energy inefficient, compressed gases require heavy storage vessels and has terrible energy density, infusing it into the surface metals has poor energy density and is problematic for other reasons... actually turning it into energy is pretty well understood; it's getting it to where it's needed that's not. Or has something changed since I last looked at this?

barney54 11y ago

How do hydrogen fuel cells disrupt the world? The fuel for today's fuel cells is natural gas. How would these be any different?

toomuchtodo 11y ago
Because some people believe fuel cells are better tech than batteries. It's not true of course, but that's where the belief comes from. Batteries store energy. Fuel cells are solid state engines, not storage systems.

jws 11y ago

Energy breakthrough exhaustion. There are just too many breathless press releases and articles and they mostly drift away to join the aggregate body of scientific knowledge. Way outside my field here, but this one doesn't address cost of production, only cost of components. Platinum is about $12/kW with current technology fuel cells. In a quick googling I found a 1kW fuel cell for $6000. It is safe to assume the platinum cost is fiddling about the edges. Combine with the hunch that creating large structures out of carbon nanotubes with nickel nanoparticles arranged in a certain way isn't going to be free, and my interest ebbs quickly. The good news of this article is that if we do somehow end up in a future where fuel cells are widely used, we will need not be constrained by the world supply of platinum… but that isn't front page news.

david-given 11y ago

I thought the problem with hydrogen as a fuel was storage --- liquification requires cryogenic temperatures and is very energy inefficient, compressed gases require heavy storage vessels and has terrible energy density, infusing it into the surface metals has poor energy density and is problematic for other reasons... actually turning it into energy is pretty well understood; it's getting it to where it's needed that's not. Or has something changed since I last looked at this?