A lot of people across the world have taken to greener fuels in a big way. In recent times, there has been much talk about how every individual can contribute to global cool by reducing his/her carbon footprint. Look around you and you will find nature abuse in everything that people do, right from driving a car to dumping garbage with gay abandon. Most of this wanton behavior is attributed to the lack of stringent laws and regulations to curb these activities. Moreover, governments across the world have other ‘pressing needs’ to attend to that they hardly find it necessary to sensitize people about the need to go ‘green’. However, a few conscientious communities across the world have taken it upon themselves to educate people about the environmental ramifications of their reckless behavior as well as to identify ways that can reduce global warming significantly. The brainchild of this initiative is the concept of fuel cells.
For those of you who are new to this concept, fuel cells make use of environment-friendly elements such as Hydrogen to create power cells that can replace conventional batteries. Today, energy is an indispensable requirement in all walks of life. It would be impossible to imagine a car or a computer that doesn’t utilize external energy to run. It would be contradicting the law of nature. The sources of energy used in the past have adversely affected the environment. And this is one of the primary reasons why fuel cells have been conceived, if you do not consider the convenience and cost factors. In the latest development, scientists have built a fuel processor that is radically different from its predecessors in the design aspect. In these fuel cells, a fuel processor consists of a series of reactors arranged in concentric tubes. The central core of this processor is the combustor, which is encompassed by heating chambers that split hydrogen from methanol when methanol and water are heated together. Alternately, carbon monoxide is also removed from the end product. The result is a greener by-product of burnt gas.
One of the major advantages of this fuel cell is its size. Earlier, fuel cells were associated with large size and were cumbersome. Hydrogen is not easy to store and large cylinders are required. Consequently, usage of fuel cells in portable devices was unthinkable. Moreover, usage of methanol for hydrogen also appeared unfeasible as these methanol cells were bulky as well. The biggest challenge since then was to store hydrogen in its liquid methanol form and later heat the compound to release the gas. However, the issue was the size again. This was when scientists hit upon the idea of using concentric cells instead of the flat-layered cells used earlier. Since the use of concentric chambers will reduce the size of the fuel cell per se, it would be possible to incorporate these cells into laptops and portable electronic devices. From what we hear, each fuel cell recharge can power your device for 50 hrs. The cells will be insulated with a metal or ceramic outer layer or advanced plastic for higher durability.
However, despite this development, scientists are faced with another challenge. An important by-product of the methanol reaction is water and it goes without saying that water can damage the fragile electronic parts inside a device. Moreover, safety and cost issues should also be taken into consideration. Hence, it is still uncertain if these cells would find their way into electronic devices eventually. Till then, using them in your cars seems like a better and a more practical idea.
Via: technology review
