What is, "fuel cell", technology?

Question

Will it really be beneficial to humanity, as a whole, in the present form that it is being projected?

Afterall, everyone needs to be the first.

But, our present fuel situation too, is not, by far comfortable.

Answer 1

Fuel cells are an old technology that allows us to change chemical energy directly to electrical energy without using a boiler and a steam engine to drive a generator.  They're very expensive and not particularly magical; they don't create any new energy and they don't last very long, either.  We mainly use them on spacecraft, which generally have hydrogen tanks available for the fuel.  Outside of that, they've proven thoroughly useless.

Answer 2

try this site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#T...

it explains, in great detail, what a fuel cell is. :) kind of complicated. but, i think that it is going to be beneficial to us, as it makes use of resources that are present in large quantities and are renewable.

Answer 3

Fuel cells are great because they do make use of renewable resources to produce power from, for example, hydrogen.  In the process of joining hydrogen gas with oxygen to produce water an electron is needed.  This electron flows (as current)through a wire to join the atoms, but on it can power a motor along the way.  When it meets the atoms, a molecule of water is formed as exhaust.

The problem with fuel cells is that they still require energy to seperate the hydrogen from the oxygen in the first place, this is done typically by electrolysis using power from the grid which is typically fossil fueled.  No energy conversion is 100% efficient so powering a fuel cell vehicle using hydrogen made from grid power is more wasteful than just burning regular fossil fuels alone.  A trade off is that we can use solar power to break the molecules, but that would be a lot of solar cells to power a nation on hydrogen and is not practical, same with wind turbines.

Answer 4

A company announced last year that it has created a fuel cell that will plug into a standard 110 volt outlet, charge for 5 hours, and allow you to travel from New York to LA on one charge! If that dont benefit humanity then I dont know what will (other than God ofcoarse). Something new about this technology. The article said it's still top secret but said the fuel cells rely on super think layers of metal with poceline between each layer and surrounded by chemicals. Much more effective than a standard battery or fuel cell and retains 1000% (not a typo) more energy.

Answer 5

fuelcells.sae.org/

www.ballard.com/

Answer 6

A fuel cell is an electrochemical conversion device. It produces electricity from various external quantities of fuel (on the anode side) and an oxidant (on the cathode side). These react in the presence of an electrolyte. Generally, the reactants flow in and reaction products flow out while the electrolyte remains in the cell. Fuel cells can operate virtually continuously as long as the necessary flows are maintained.

Fuel cells are different from batteries in that they consume reactant, which must be replenished, whereas batteries store electrical energy chemically in a closed system. Additionally, while the electrodes within a battery react and change as a battery is charged or discharged, a fuel cell's electrodes are catalytic and relatively stable.

Many combinations of fuel and oxidant are possible. A hydrogen cell uses hydrogen as fuel and oxygen as oxidant. Other fuels include hydrocarbons and alcohols. Other oxidants include air, chlorine and chlorine dioxide