With 470 million consumer electronic devices requiring portable power, it could represent a fuel cell business worth about $25 billion, George Apanel, from chemical industry consultancy SRI Consulting, told BBC earlier this month. "It is the beginning of the personal power revolution where people will be able to divorce themselves from the tyranny of the grid."

Fuel cells are a technology considered promising for use as a source of heat and electricity for buildings, and as an electrical power source for electric motors propelling vehicles and nearly anything else requiring a source of energy or power. On the small scale, prospects include laptops, cell phones, cameras, camcorders, MP3 players and other gadgets we've grown to "depend on" day to day. On the larger scale, prospective fuel cell contribution lies in cars and buses, as well as power for buildings that are not connected to a national grid — things we truly depend on day to day.

Portable applications are those expected to launch the industry.

Fuel cells combine hydrogen (or hydrogen-rich fuel) and oxygen to produce electricity, heat and water (the latter two as byproducts); they harness the chemical energy stored in fuels, such as hydrogen and methanol, and convert it into electrical energy. It is important to note here that fuel cells are not actually a new source of energy but are only a new way of using existing energy supplies. Having been around for some time as backup or day-to-day energy power for hospitals and hotels, among others, fuel cells are now blossoming as electricity generators that can be distributed to residential and commercial customers. (For further explanation regarding the fundamentals of fuel cells, visit Katrina C. Arabe's past post.)

Fuel cells are also often compared to batteries because they convert energy produced by a chemical reaction into usable electric power; however, unlike batteries, fuel cells do not lose their charge — as long as fuel (e.g., hydrogen) is supplied.

Although fuel cells best operate on pure hydrogen — the most abundant element on Earth, making up about three-quarters of all matter — fuels such as natural gas, methanol or even gasoline can be reformed to produce the hydrogen required for fuel cells. Fuels containing hydrogen generally require a "fuel reformer" that extracts the hydrogen. Energy also could be supplied by biomass, wind or solar power. Fuel cells today are running on numerous types of fuels, even gas from landfills and wastewater treatment plants.

They are viewed and touted as a hopeful clean-energy alternative for future sustainable power generation. However, as BBC pointed out, "fuel cells are not in the purest sense an 'alternative' energy technology because the fuels on which they depend have to be produced in what may or may not be environmentally friendly processes." Despite this, "they allow the emission points of pollution to be pushed further back in the chain where they can be more easily collected and dealt with."

The watchword regarding fuel cells, however, is "potential." Although the technology is making progress, it still has a ways to go. For instance, Fritz Prinz, chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department and the Rodney H. Adams Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, told the Stanford Report, "Fuel cells today are not economically producible and cannot compete with the traditional combustion engine. But there are significant opportunities to improve the performance and the economics of fuel cells."

The recent energy-price spike is predicted to be a catalyst for awareness of reliable and efficient, sustainable and environmentally friendly energy sources and technologies such as fuel cells. "Fuel cells have several benefits over conventional combustion-based technologies currently used in many power plants and passenger vehicles," according to the U.S. Department of Energy. "They produce much smaller quantities of greenhouse gases and none of the air pollutants that create smog and cause health problems. If pure hydrogen is used as a fuel, fuel cells emit only heat and water as a byproduct."

Such technologies, many hope, could reduce or remove oil dependency and the consequential vulnerability to volatile world oil prices and energy imports. While "promoting energy diversity and a transition to renewable energy sources," according to fuel-cell education organization Fuel Cells 2000, and now that the automobile industry is growing increasingly concerned about fuel certainty, fuel cells are gathering stronger interest among the auto industry and vehicle consumers. "The race to develop more fuel-efficient and less polluting cars has picked up pace as gas prices, exacerbated by a series of devastating hurricanes in the United States, hit record levels this year and as worries heighten over the impact of global warming on climate patterns," reported Reuters UK from last week's Tokyo Motor Show.

As such, "Most automakers agree that fuel-cell cars powered by hydrogen produced with renewable energy sources are the end game since they would rely on no fossil fuels and emit only pure water," further noted Reuters. In fact, "the overriding message at the Tokyo Motor Show […] is that gas-guzzlers must make way for green cars that pollute less and rely less on shrinking supplies of fossil fuels," according to a Washington Post article last Wednesday

However, most of the automakers present at the show said the technology was at least a decade away, Reuters said.

Still, "…We have the knowledge and the products to make it a real prospect," Dr. Alan Lloyd, from the Californian Environmental Protection Agency, told BBC.

References

Fuel cells 'need political push'
Jo Twist
BBC News, Oct. 5, 2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4309686.stm

Cool innovations: New fuel-cell technology could help power future vehicles
David Orenstein
Stanford Report, Oct. 19, 2005
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/october19/prinz-101905.html

U.S. Department of Energy
Fuel Cells
http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/fuelcells/basics.html

Fuel Cells 2000
FAQs
http://www.fuelcells.org/basics/faqs.html

Debate over clean car technology rages on
Chang-Ran Kim and Michael Shields
Reuters UK, Oct. 20, 2005
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2005-10-20T123621Z_01_BAU045254_RTRIDST_0_TECH-AUTOS-SHOW-FUTURE-DC.XML

Ecological Cars Highlight Tokyo Auto Show
Yuri Kageyama (Associated Press)
Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101900373.html

The Fundamentals of Fuel Cells
Katrina C. Arabe
ThomasNet Industrial Market Trends, Feb. 15, 2005
http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/2005/02/the_fundamental.html