Energy & Green Tech
On an average weekday, the air in Beijing can be so choked with smog that entire buildings disappear from view. Emissions from heavy industry and coal power plants are largely to blame, but so too are the nearly 5 million ...
May 20, 2016
8
24
Energy & Green Tech
Researchers at the University of Bath have developed an innovative miniature fuel cell that can generate electricity from urine, creating an affordable, renewable and carbon-neutral way of generating power.
Apr 18, 2016
4
49
Energy & Green Tech
(Tech Xplore)—For the first time, researchers from Wetsus, the European Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology; and Wageningen University, both in The Netherlands, have combined two microbial processes—microbial ...
Energy & Green Tech
A drone aircraft taking off from an airport in Scotland earlier this year for a 10-minute test run at 200 feet and then making a successful landing may not seem like a big deal but the power system on this one has made it ...
Engineering
In the race to design smaller handheld devices and smartphones, a key factor is decreasing the sizes of components. As the demand for thinner and lighter microelectronic devices increases, manufacturers often are limited ...
Mar 21, 2016
0
543
Energy & Green Tech
A new kind of fuel cell that can turn urine into electricity could revolutionize the way we produce bioenergy, particularly in developing countries. The research, published in Electrochimica Acta, describes a new design of ...
Mar 16, 2016
0
1650
Energy & Green Tech
Swedish knowhow at the Mobile World Congress is being talked up, in the form of the pocket-sized fuel charger JAQ—"green" power is always interesting and the spotlight is what the company behind JAQ, myFC, can bring to ...
Energy & Green Tech
As if this was not interesting enough—Rasa, a very cute little city car you can buy on contract like your mobile phone—comes the real news, the car is fuel cell-powered. The BBC's TopGear site reported on the startup ...
Energy & Green Tech
Audi's appearance at the North American International Auto Show was highlighted by a key talking point at this event.
Energy & Green Tech
A fuel cell can keep drones in flight in hours, not minutes. The company behind the technology will show it at CES 2016.
A fuel cell is an electrochemical conversion device. It produces electricity from fuel (on the anode side) and an oxidant (on the cathode side), which react in the presence of an electrolyte. The reactants flow into the cell, and the reaction products flow out of it, while the electrolyte remains within it. Fuel cells can operate virtually continuously as long as the necessary flows are maintained.
Fuel cells are different from electrochemical cell batteries in that they consume reactant from an external source, which must be replenished – a thermodynamically open system. By contrast, batteries store electrical energy chemically and hence represent a thermodynamically closed system.
Many combinations of fuels and oxidants are possible. A hydrogen fuel cell uses hydrogen as its fuel and oxygen (usually from air) as its oxidant. Other fuels include hydrocarbons and alcohols. Other oxidants include chlorine and chlorine dioxide.
The principle of the fuel cell had been demonstrated by Sir William Grove in 1839, and other investigators had experimented with various forms of fuel cell. The first practical fuel cell was developed by Francis Thomas Bacon in 1959.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
