Friday, April 23, 2021

The hydrogen battery

This came to my notice earlier: the transport fuel cell. What's being transported is hydrogen-1: protons. The Hiroshimites found that with europium, they can transport these ions at higher temperatures and higher humidities than they used to.

They're competing against "solid state fuel cells", by which - I think - they mean solid oxide fuel cells. The solid oxide is basically a rusted metal which, at high temperatures, acts as a cathode. The negatively charged oxygen ions are then free to go over to the anode and give you electricity. So Wiki tells me.

Wiki is also telling me that those temperatures are annoyingly high, like Venus high. More "intermediate" temperatures can be had by the usual catalysts, often platinum. Which is, you know, pricy.

By proton transfer, rather than oxygen transfer, I'm guessing they're going the other way 'round, moving positively-charged ions over to the cathode. Here they'd had the problem that they needed to run everything at a LOW temperature. So maybe they're trying to meet the IT-SOFC in the middle.

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