Boffins Have Found Way Make Hydrogen Fuel Cells Much Cheaper
Platinum is one of the most important omponents of a hydrogen fuel cell, well not anymore, at least according to a group of researchers from the Imperial College London.
It needs a chemist to explain what really happens inside a hydrogen fuel cell, but the essence of it is that the platinum is the element responsible for splitting the hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons, electrons are the particles responsible for providing the electric power for the car, while the protons will merge with oxygen with the help of platinum again to form water molecules.
This is basically how hydrogen cells have been operating until now, Well of course there are more details to the chemical process, but we’d rather not include that here for simplicity’s sake. What’s new is that the Imperial College research proved that platinum can be efficiently replaced by iron atoms, effectively reducing the production price by a huge margin.
Iron is cheaper and more readily available, giving nitrogen fuel technology a better chance to thrive and compete with other forms of renewable in the near future. And in the other hand preventing carmakers from depleting the more precious platinum reserves.
Of course, the most important detail for the regular customer is the price tag, Professor Anthony Kucernak, from Imperial College’s Department of Chemistry, said that “Around 60 percent of the cost of a single fuel cell is the platinum for the catalyst,” he added, “To make fuel cells a real viable alternative to fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, for example, we need to bring that cost down.”
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