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Conversations well-nigh fuel cells tend to sway perilously between groundless optimism and exceptional despair. To grasp this visually, ane need look no farther than the historical stock nautical chart of FuelCell Free energy Inc., the largest thespian in the fuel jail cell manufacture. Three times in the final four years, the company'south stock has doubled in a number of days, before crashing downwardly to new lows. While public sentiment regarding fuel cells seems to be trending pessimistic, 3 technological forces take been quietly percolating in the groundwork, creating a kind of perfect storm that could propel fuel cell technology from obscurity into widespread adoption.

The starting time and perhaps most surprising of these forces is the plateauing of bombardment efficiencies. While hardly a day goes past in which some new bookish publication promises to have solved the globe's bombardment crises, these innovations have been tantalizingly slow in making their manner to market. The net effect is that we are even so plugging away with the same lithium ion battery tech that has been around for decades. And because of the ever-increasing demand for a solution to the ability storage dilemma, many companies have opted to await exterior the battery box, and often every bit not, their eyes take come up to rest on fuel cells. Two recent news bulletins advise the smart coin is shifting away from the pursuit of better batteries to the adoption of fuel cells.

Apple Inc. recently made waves past issuing a patent for a fuel-cell-based system that would be capable of powering a MacBook for several weeks without recharge. The patent uses specifications already existing in Apple's MagSafe charger, suggesting the fuel cell could exist used with iPhones and iPads as well. While fuel cells typically piece of work by mixing a fuel such as hydrogen, with an oxidizing amanuensis such every bit water or oxygen, the Apple patent also lists borohydride, sodium silicate, lithium hydride, magnesium hydride, and other compounds as fuel sources. Apple's patent comes on the heels of a British company announcing that they had developed a born hydrogen fuel cell capable of powering an iPhone for an entire week.

The other company to reveal plans for abandoning the battery in favor of fuel cells is the world's largest auto maker, Toyota. This is all the more surprising given Toyota's pioneering success with battery-powered vehicles like the Prius. After several years of exhaustive research, the car giant seems to have concluded that battery powered vehicles will ultimately be labeled a historical expressionless terminate and have set up their sights on vehicles powered past fuel cells. The reasoning behind Toyota's startling reversal regarding batteries is worth careful scrutiny (especially if you lot're in the market for a Tesla or other electrical vehicle).

The insurmountable trouble with battery powered vehicles as Toyota sees information technology is the effect of the fourth dimension it takes to recharge. Fifty-fifty with Tesla's much hyped "superchargers," the fourth dimension it takes to recharge an electric vehicle is nowhere near in the vicinity of what it takes to gas up a normal automobile. Toyota did the math and concluded that drivers won't exist satisfied waiting around xl minutes for their electric vehicle to recharge. With the current applied science, faster charging introduces massive inefficiencies that obviate the technological advantages of an electric vehicle.

Sensing a dead finish, Toyota has bet their war breast on a new fuel jail cell powered vehicle chosen the Mirai. Unlike the Tesla, the Mirai tin can be fully refueled in as little as v minutes, bringing it in line with the amount of time consumers are accustomed to spending at the pump.

Media team swarming around the fuel cell powered Mirai.

Media personnel swarming the fuel cell powered Mirai.

Belying those that believe the Mirai might be some kind of ane off that's chop-chop abased, reports have surfaced that Lexus will also launch a fuel-jail cell-powered LS Sedan in the coming year. Marker Templin, executive vice president of Lexus International, has spoken bullishly nigh the advantages of fuel cells over other electric vehicles, citing design inefficiencies intrinsic to plugin hybrids. "Unfortunately, when you build a plug-in hybrid you add weight to the vehicle, and you arrive less fuel-efficient," said Templin in an interview with Light-green Motorcar Reports. While he wouldn't become on tape regarding the potential for a Lexus-made fuel cell sedan, he intimated that this would exist his drivetrain of selection in the future.

Besides from plateauing bombardment efficiencies, the 2nd force agitating in favor of fuel cells is stricter pollution laws — specifically recent legislation requiring coal power plants to adopt more than stringent emission standards. While coal ability plants and fuel cells may seem similar unlikely bedfellows, this is exactly what seems to be on the cards, thanks to a articulation projection being undertaken past the United States Department of Energy and FuelCell Energy Inc. Together they are developing an innovative carbon capture technology which volition sequester CO2 and nitrogen dioxide from coal burning power plants and use information technology to power an attached 2-megawatt fuel cell. The model they are currently working with is designed to capture about 60 tons of CO2 per day.

While the concept of using fuel cells to capture carbon emissions has been around since the 1990s, only in the last decade has the toll of the enabling technology declined enough to get in a viable commercial solution. The college costs owe in large function to the unique nature of the fuel cells in question, which are called molten carbonate fuel cells and rely on CO2 to operate. This is obviously a more complicated and expensive type of fuel cell than yous might find powering your MacBook someday shortly.

The 3rd technological shift creating a rising tide for fuel cells is the invention of novel means for affordably creating their component fuels. While the dazzler of fuel cells has always been their efficiency and lack of emissions, they have one major drawback – the gases that power them are expensive to supply, and often crave inputs from more traditional ability sources like natural gas. Hydrogen for instance, the principle component used to power most fuel cells, is contained in water. But in order to separate it from oxygen in a procedure called electrolysis, more traditional free energy sources are often used, thus canceling out much of environmental and efficiency benefits to be gained from a fuel prison cell.

solar-water-splitter-hydrogen

Graphic showing the new material researches at Rice University accept created for generating hydrogen using sunlight.

Recently, even so, there take been some promising developments in the creation of new mechanisms for generating hydrogen for fuel cells without resorting to natural gas. For instance, researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas have devised a relatively simple, depression cost mode to carve up hydrogen from oxygen using sunlight. At the eye of their innovation is a iii-layer material fabricated of aluminum, nickel oxide, and gold. Sunlight hitting the cloth gets converted by the gold nanoparticles into loftier energy "hot" electrons. These "hot electrons" are sequestered on the top layer of the textile and used to generate a photocurrent sufficient for splitting h2o, and siphoning off the resulting hydrogen gas. This hydrogen tin then be used to power fuel cells.

If the to a higher place arrangement proves commercially viable and able to scale, information technology could be a game changer for fuel cells, propelling them from a niche industry into the world'southward nigh sensible ability source.

Check out our ExtremeTech Explains series for more in-depth coverage.