Fuell

Fuel Cell Technology for Cars
From a news story by CNN San Francisco Reporter Don Knapp
September 2002
Note: Fill 'er up with hydrogen? That’s what some California motorists may be saying soon, ascar makers try to ramp up production of zero emission cars to meet state requirements by the year 2003.
Beneath the skin of this ordinary looking prototype sits an electro-chemical reactor: a handbuilt, astronomically expensive power plant known as a fuel cell. It’s expected to be running ordinary family cars on California’s roads within three years.
Rocket scientists have been using fuelcells ever since the United States went to the moon more than 30 years ago. But they're generally too complicated and expensive for much other than a government-sponsored space program.
The Californiafuel cell partnership says it’s about to change that.
Firoz Rasul of Ballard Power Systems says, "A fuel cell, very simply described, is a power generator. It makes electricity. It makes electricity ondemand, and it makes it through the combination of hydrogen and oxygen."
In this Ballard power systems animation (see in the computer), a hydrogen atom with its one electron, attempts to passthrough a fuel cell membrane to unite with an oxygen atom. The membrane allows only the hydrogen proton to pass through, forcing its electron to scurry around the membrane to catch up with the proton on theother side. This creates electricity, water, and heat, but no exhaust emissions.
Eight of the world's biggest automobile makers, along with energy companies and fuel cell builders, will work side byside in this Sacramento, California center to learn how to build fuel cell vehicles that work as well as cars with gasoline engines.
John Wallace of Ford Motor Company says, "We still have technicalchallenges getting this extremely complex system to work properly, the way customers expect it to work. There are challenges in using new fuels, and providing the new fuel infrastructure.
And...