Fuel Cells and Ionic Conductivity

Technocrat

Fuel Cells and Ionic Conductivity

zogger

Sat Aug 02 18:43:00 -0700 2008

Chemistry

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A new material has been developed that will be useful in improving the performance of fuel cells. The current solid oxide electrolytes in use are functional enough, but aren't efficient, ions have to really work to get through them. This new material opens the pathways up, improving ionic conductivity, this movement of oxygen ions through the electrolyte, by a huge factor, and has an added bonus of working at room temperatures.

"The new layered material solves this problem by combining two materials with very different crystal structures. The mismatch triggers a distortion of the atomic arrangement at their interface and creates a pathway through which ions can easily travel," Varela said. ed.z.: They call it "colossal". Improvement over the old way "by a factor of 100 million". Colossal enough I guess..

Fuel Cells and Ionic Conductivity

mcrbids

Sat Aug 02 21:33:05 -0700 2008
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Definitely colossal.

This has the potential to revolutionize alternative power. Yes, I said revolutionize, as though this were some late night television ad for a floor cleaner, except it isn't.

The biggest power with energy generation is time dilation. With most "green" power sources, you get the power when it's available, which doesn't always match when it's needed. Wind power, for example, has been shown to destabilize a power grid, now in (for example) Canada. Solar power only works when the sun shines, leading to generations of jokes about solar powered flashlights.

Jokes aside, it's been a real, significant problem because it's surprisingly difficult to store electrical power for later! You can pump water uphill in a dam, if you happen to have mountains and copious amounts of water handy. (most areas don't) You can store it in batteries, but that costs about half the power available, and batteries are damned expensive and wear out quickly, so this is just not an option for a utility scale. You can... (?) large, expensive, bulky capacitors? (!?)

But generating hydrogen with the electricity, then using that to generate power is just beautiful, except that, thus far, it's been operating on a scale of efficiency comparable (or worse than!) batteries, and also isn't cheap. If electricity could be converted into hydrogen at 90% efficiency, that would be revolutionary.

It would take a rather small amount of "power cache" to compensate for a significant amount of power grid instability. (maybe 10% total capacity? For an hour or so?) And further, this could be used to kick-start the hydrogen economy!

If a service station could efficiently convert electricty into hydrogen, the existing power grid could be used as a nationwide fuel distribution system, capable of accepting inputs from many different sources: solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, waste heat from burning garbage, etc. as well as the classic petrol/nuclear sources. And the fact that many of these sources are sporadic becomes far less of a problem than before!

This is the best news I've read in a long time!