Scientists have been researching for decades trying to discover a catalyst that dramatically reduce the cost of fabricating hydrogen fuel cells. Why you ask? Greener revolution across all facets of technology where there would solely be only one byproduct i.e water. apparently they are closer with an iron-based catalyst for making hydrogen fuel cells.
But can Fuel cells really provide the oomph factor to hydrogen vehicles?
Elon Musk calls fuel cells “fool cells”. You can guess why, perhaps he is the biggest pioneer of electric vehicles? Besides that he also claims that there are so many energy conversions until you eventually get electricity which kinda takes efficiency for a toss. It costs much less effort and time to make battery-electric vehicles instead. But he would say that wouldn’t he? But scientist claim that regardless, fuel cells cannot provide the acceleration for vehicles when compared to electric vehicles. In order words, if there are two cars, one powered with fuel cells and the other battery powered electric vehicle, when the light hits green, the fuel cells powered cars is no match at all. Interesting!
To make it more interesting, you can make the fuel cell power car powerful. Yes, thats right, but you would need another battery anyways to kickstart the car. So why go through all this fuss? Put a big battery and voila, you are all set.
Let’ argue that we need fuel cells and we need diversification and all that. What we know that it takes a catalyst to convert hydrogen into electricity and based on available materials today, its costs an arm and a leg!
Having said that Toyota launched their hydrogen vehicle, Toyota Mirai, check it out.
So has fuel cells found that catalyst?
According to a study by Nature Energy, scientists are moving closer to that goal. Professor Wu Gang, argues that they have discovered a significant breakthrough that will eventually help “unleash the tremendous potential of hydrogen fuel cells”.
In simple words, and long story short, if we can combine iron with nitrogen and carbon, we can get a catalyst that is durable, efficient and most importantly inexpensive – the three main objectives the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has identified for fuel cell research.
So whats stopping scientists? Catalyse that Fuel cell and let’s move on right?
Not so easy! Well of course we have challenges if we use iron as a catalyst in fuel cells. For starters, iron is not that durable, it’s highly corrosive,, so they need bond four nitrogen atoms to the iron. This however vastly improved the catalyst. .
Wu strongly believes that the all new iron-based catalysts have the potential to make hydrogen fuel cells much more affordable for commercial use. It still needs more research though.
Bottom line: Iron-based catalyst for hydrogen fuel cells
Looks like we just may have a new iron based catalyst for hydrogen fuel cells, but don’t expect it to be in every car out there yet. It might be tested on big vehicles, primarily commercial sectors.