Time is critical for fuel-cell resurgence
- PDF / 409,492 Bytes
- 1 Pages / 585 x 783 pts Page_size
- 34 Downloads / 216 Views
Time is critical for fuel-cell resurgence
Inside: EDITORIAL
Time is critical for fuel-cell resurgence ENERGY SECTOR ANALYSIS
Future energy, fuel cells, and solid-oxide fuel-cell technology ENERGY SECTOR ANALYSIS
Electrolysis for hydrogen production ENERGY QUARTERLY ORGANIZERS CHAIR Y. Shirley Meng, University of California, San Diego, USA Andrea Ambrosini, Sandia National Laboratories, USA Kristen Brown, Commonwealth Edison Company, USA David Cahen, Weizmann Institute, Israel Russell R. Chianelli, The University of Texas at El Paso, USA George Crabtree, Argonne National Laboratory, USA Brian J. Ingram, Argonne National Laboratory, USA Elizabeth A. Kócs, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA Sabrina Sartori, University of Oslo, Norway Subhash L. Shinde, University of Notre Dame, USA Anke Weidenkaff, University of Stuttgart, Germany M. Stanley Whittingham, Binghamton University, The State University of New York, USA Steve M. Yalisove, University of Michigan, USA
“Future energy, fuel cells, and solid-oxide fuel-cell technology” title image shows a 2.8-MW molten carbonate fuel-cell system on the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) campus that operates on waste methane gas from a wastewater treatment plant. The fuel cell provided about 7% of UCSD’s total energy needs. Credit: UCSD. “Electrolysis for hydrogen production” title image credit: Luz Adriana Villa, Flickr Creative Commons.
To suggest ideas for Energy Quarterly, to get involved, or for information on sponsorship, send email to [email protected].
Fuel cells have had an on-again/off-again romance with the public and with policymakers. When I started graduate school, oh so long ago, battery research was considered old and stodgy; solar-cell research was the realm of the dreamers; and nuclear-reactor research had suffered a devastating blow from the Chernobyl disaster. Fuel cells, on the other hand, were the young upstarts—eliciting optimism, grounded in reality, and free of a worrisome safety record. They were sure to revolutionize the energy delivery infrastructure and usher in a sustainable future. And the technology could be embraced across the political spectrum. The oil and automotive industries anticipated a future in which hydrogen for transportation could be derived from fossil fuels and in which consumer habits would be completely unchanged. On the other end of the political divide, environmentalists could imagine hydrogen produced directly from solar energy. Years later, the latter would spawn tremendous global activities under the banner of “solar fuels.” As research efforts pushed on, however, technical barriers to bringing fuel cells out of the laboratory and into the marketplace became increasingly evident. High power density, manufacturability, long-term stability, and cost-competitiveness all proved more difficult to attain than anticipated in those heady days. But the real culprit may well have been the recognition that a hydrogen infrastructure would require an immense financial investment and yet might still not reduce carbon emiss
Data Loading...
