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There is a major problem with modern fuel cell technology, how to get pure hydrogen to the actual reactive membrane. One way is to extract it (usually through electrolysis) at a factory and try to store it in a pure form. This has obvious downsides like what happens to a tank of pure hydrogen at 4,000 psi on impact. Another way is to store it as part of a relatively simple hydrocarbon molecule and then use a permanent platinum reformer to grab off some hydrogen. Think of how much an inget of platinum must cost and you can see this is not feasable. A few years ago a group provided another solution (pun intended) which was to hold the hydrogen in sodium borohydride, a stable liquid that would readily release it. This approach still takes more energy to collect the fuel than the fuel releases when used.

An Israeli company called Engineuity may have come up with a new, more elegant method of gathering some pure hydrogen. They continuously feed a rod of a light metal like aluminum to oxidize in water leaving behind the hydrogen for the taking. With a little heat supposedly the process produces enough of a flowrate. Then the heat produced by the oxidation itself keeps the process self sustaining. The metal oxide is conveniently heavy for filtration and recycling. There is a builtin distilation part of this process so the filtration is not even an issue.

And you thought it was bad for a car to rust. Clearly some companies have been, um, “preparing” for this technology for quite some time. I can only imagine that these companies who have established themselves as the leaders in the rusting car department will emerge as leaders for the new “hydrogen economy”.

Still a couple of problems with fuel cell technology assuming this technology can be brought to market. One is now we have to ship metal around to supply as fuel and reclaim for recycling. The second issue is even though we would not need a platinum reformer, we would still use an expensive platinum membrane for the most promising technology for fuel cell construction (PEM).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at 11:12 am and is filed under