Screaming Penguin

Scientists in Japan have discovered a way to advance the technologies of fuel cells and lower the oeprating temperatures. Fuel cells quite simply create electricity by combining oxygen and a catalyst together and capturing the power of the reaction. The catalyst is traditionally hydrogen, which works well and is quite efficient and non toxic (relative to combustion engines, they are a plethora more efficient.) The issue has been that hydrogen is expensive to refine and potentially dangerous to use (although the danger part is debatable and relative, whats worse, a completely polluted environment and extreme damage to the climate as a result, or a highly combustible fuel, hmmm, sounds kinda like gasonline, methane, propane, etc, even if more powerful, its clean and thats the difference.) Usign other catalysts such as methane and propane has typically yielded very high operating temperatures, which causes many other complications. Now the aforementioned Japanese scientists have developed a method of using other fuels such as methane and propane as a fuel cell catalyst and have come up with efficient and temperature constrained results. They have developed fuel cells that operate on these less expensive substances and operate at less than 500 ± C. This is a significant achievement and may help to revolutionize the way we all use energy. Removing the toxic effects of combustion engines and switching to a cost effective AND clean alternative is imperative. We need to clean up our act, and this may be the way. Check the details via the link.   Advancing Technology of Fuel Cells: BBC SciTech