Hydrogen Batteries And Fuel Cells

The Hydrogen Fuel Cell could revolutionize the world. This ingenious technology, which creates electricity from the chemical reactions of hydrogen and oxygen has, in its 150-year history, passed many of the critical tests along the path from invention to innovation. Recent developments in fuel cell technology and concurrent developments within the energy and automotive industries have brought the world to brink of the fuel cell age and the hydrogen economy.

2. ALTERNATIVE FUELS - ETHANOL & THE ALKANOLS 3. REDOX CHEMISTRY & BATTERIES 4. RADIOACTIVITY & ITS USES

Every year it is estimated that 1.8 million batteries are not properly disposed of. When this happens, it poses a major threat to the ecosystem. Heavy metals used in batteries are toxic to humans and they can leach into our water system. Lead and nickel-cadmium (Nd-CD) can only enter the human body by inhalation or ingestion, but mercury can even be absorbed through the skin. Federal and state laws and regulations have been implemented and enforced to ensure heavy metal batteries are properly disposed of and recycled.

Batteries store energy in chemical form. They release energy by pumping electrons’ through wires from the minus pole to the plus pole. Devices inbetween convert this energy to another form, Efficieny- e.motor=85%, combustion= 20%

From the calculations in the data analysis, the actual percent composition of magnesium is 65.3% ± 1.7%, the actual percent composition of oxygen is 34.7% ±2.5%. The purpose of this lab was achieved as the percent composition of the magnesium oxide was determined and was used to test the law of definite proportions. The hypothesis was mostly correct as the results demonstrated that the actual percent composition was only slightly greater/lesser than the hypothesized percent composition. However, the actual percent composition may have been affected by several limitations during this investigation.

This cell uses bacteria like Shewanella oneidensis and Rhodoferax ferrireducens and many labs are attempting to find better strains of bacteria more suited to the process (3). This fuel cells work in two parts. Basically, the microbial fuel cell has two halves, aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic means with presence of oxygen, anaerobic means a lack of oxygen. When bacteria consume their “food” in aerobic conditions they produce carbon dioxide and water, however when it’s in an anaerobic condition they produce carbon dioxide, electrons and protons. The MFC has the bacteria put in the anaerobic chamber of the cell and decompose water material that contain glucose and/or acetate. The bacteria also free hydrogen ions and electrons. The electrons flow from an anode into the cathode. The hydrogen ions however just pass through the barrier; soon the electrons and hydrogen ions are in the aerobic chamber and combine with the oxygen forming h2o. The H2O is released and electrical energy is produced from the transfer off the energy between the Anode and Cathode (or Anaerobic and Aerobic chambers).

An anode is the negatively charged electrode that loses electrons and also where oxidation takes place.

A lot of information from different sources was gathered with the purpose of comparing different Li-ion batteries mechanisms, cathode and anode materials, structure and fabrication procedures, and their respective advantages and disadvantages.

The automotive industry is one of the largest industries in the entire world. As the world’s population grows and economic development occurs, the auto industry also expands. Unfortunately the growth in car numbers has had a negative environmenta, impact due to carbon dioxide and particulate emissions generated and released from the combustion process. Technology has developed a solution by utilizing the concept of hydrogen fuel cells. As the years have passed, there has been continuous development on automotive fuel cells and now it has come close to mass production of these vehicles. The main problem is the continued development of hydrogen fuel cells and their infrastructure may not be worth the cost.

b) Recycling household and car batteries keeps heavy metals such as mercury, lithium and cadmium from being released into our air and water. Heavy metals, when consumed by people and other animals, cause numerous health problems and diseases.

small, positively-charged proton with a negatively-charged electron orbiting very fast, a model analogous to the earth orbiting the sun, or the moon orbiting the earth. Fuel cells take advantage of this structure. Using a membrane and a catalyst, hydrogen is broken up into a proton and an electron. While there are many different membrane models for fuel cells, the most appropriate one for car travel is the Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM, also called the Proton Exchange Membrane). It is called this because protons are able to easily pass through the membrane. However, because the membrane does not allow electrons to pass through it, the electrons take a detour through an electrical circuit to the other side of the cell. If hydrogen is supplied into the cell at a steady rate, the stream of electrons in the electrical circuit creates electric power. However, like all batteries, you need a positive end (cathode) and a negative end (anode); in other words, the hydrogen atoms must have a “reason” to make this electrical circuit. And what is this reason? Oxygen. With oxygen at the other end, hydrogen is more than willing to create this current so that it can bind and form H2O, or water on the other end.

Another problem is the emissions of harmful substances besides just exhaust. “Nickel-hydride batteries are responsible for higher sulfur oxide emissions, roughly 22 pounds (10 kilograms) per hybrid compared with 2.2 pounds (about 1 kilogram) for a conventional vehicle” (HowStuffWorks:

More efficient and durable batteries are needed to satisfy the requirements of new technology developments.

Even if their discovery date of the beginning of the 1930s by Kristler, aerogels are considered at present the most promising new materials in the field of thermal super- insulation. Not happy to be the subject of much research in this area, their high level of nanoporosite characteristic makes them indispensable in the development of batteries to fuel. The multitude of organic, inorganic or hybrid materials, and the appearance of new methods of preparation and extraction offer prospects for use in filtering system, ultrafine dust capture...

Fuel cells (FCs), energy storage systems (ESSs), wind power, and sunlight have received significant attentions as environment friendly energy sources for green vessels in the future [7]. Among these, FCs have strong potential as an alternatives to traditional marine propulsion power plants owing to their high efficiency, easy modularization, multi-fuel flexibility, and environmental friendliness [8,9]. In addition, FCs can essentially offer a silent and vibration free operation, reducing the needs for noise insulation of machinery. In particular, high-temperature molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs) have various advantages for eco-ships, because they achieve the system efficiency of more than 80% with negligible air pollutant emissions, when used as the waste heat. Furthermore, it may be highly efficient economically for gas transport ships to utilize fuel such as LNG and liquefied H2 carriers, since MCFCs can use the BOG emitted from the LNG ship [10,11]. However, developments of MCFC green ships are still in a primitive