Hydrogen: Moving Into The Present

For the duration of this blog, I have made an attempt to answer the question, “Is hydrogen a realistic fuel source for the future?” In order to answer this question, I began by examining much of the history of hydrogen, and researched the different applications that have occurred involving the substance over the past 350 years.  All of this reading has led me to another important question.  How is hydrogen being used in today’s world?

While some might say that the infamous 1937 crash of the LZ-129 Hindenburg set a bad precedent for hydrogen fuels, it certainly proved one thing.  Hydrogen is a highly energetic element!  While some may think of the Hindenburg crash and say, “Oh my, this Hydrogen gas is too dangerous, we ought not proceed any further!”  Others might wonder, “Look how powerful hydrogen is.  Look what it did to that airship!  How could we harness that power to help the human race?”  Despite the danger, hydrogen’s highly combustible nature is precisely the reason why research concerning hydrogen has continued and has produced positive results.

Another breakthrough in hydrogen fuels occurred in 1955 when Willard Thomas Grubb, a chemist working for General Electric in Schenectady, New York, produced a complex membrane that would become the basis for the fuel cell designs of the 1960's, as well as the fuel cell designs of the future.  Even the fuel cells of 2012, in use today, owe their basic blueprints to Willard Grubb.  Grubb created what was then known as the Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cell, a radical approach to producing electricity using hydrogen gas.  Today the same type of cell is known as the Polymer Electrolyte Membrane fuel cell, or simply the PEM fuel cell.  This membrane, created by Grubb, helped refine the process for capturing energy produced by the interaction of hydrogen gas and oxygen, which is the basic process that powers the PEM fuel cell.

Willard Grubb (right) and Leonard Niedrach (left) work on an early P.E.M. fuel cell.

A few years later, in 1958, another chemist working for General Electric named Leonard Niedrach further improved the design of the PEM fuel cell by adding platinum to Grubb’s membrane, which helped speed up the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen inside the cell.  This technical improvement is known as the platinum catalyst and is still used in current PEM fuel cell designs.  The joint effort between Grubb and Niedrach caused the PEM fuel cell to be known in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s as the Grubb-Niedrach fuel cell.  The design was successful enough to be embraced by the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and was later used in several of NASA's Gemini missions.  During this same period, small fuel cell programs were also developed by General Electric for the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ships Electronics Division, and the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps.  The Grubb-Niedrach or PEM fuel cell was attractive to both NASA and the U.S. military because of its lightweight and compact design.

The discovery of the hydrogen powered fuel cell is important to answering the central question in this blog: “Is hydrogen a realistic fuel source for the future?”  The PEM fuel cell was the first hydrogen powered energy source that was small enough to be considered useful within the context motorized transportation.  This was a monumental first step toward the later innovation of hydrogen powered vehicles.  However, before we further explore hydrogen powered vehicles, let’s first examine the Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cell in greater detail.  How does a PEM fuel cell work?

Here is a P.E.M. fuel cell diagram made by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The Polymer Electrolyte Membrane fuel cell creates electricity by combining hydrogen gas with oxygen through a controlled chamber.  This is what is known as an electrochemical process.  The chamber contains two porous electrodes, each coated with a substance acting as a catalyst, and an electrolyte.  The first electrode, called the anode in fuel cells, is the first to receive hydrogen gas when it enters the chamber, and acts as the current collector.  As hydrogen passes through the anode, it is stimulated by the catalyst, which is a fine platinum powder coating, in most designs.  Oxidation occurs within the hydrogen gas in the anode and negatively charged electrons are separated from positively charged ions (protons).  After the separation occurs, the protons move through the electrolyte where they recombine with oxygen after passing through the second electrode, called the cathode.

This is a rare photo of an electron in motion captured by a quantum stroboscope in 2008.

The reason fuel cells produce electricity is because the electrons, once they are split from the hydrogen gas while passing through the anode, cannot pass through the electrolyte.  Instead they are bypassed around the electrolyte using an electrical circuit.  When the electrons move through this circuit, they produce a current which can be harnessed to create electricity.  This is how electricity is generated by the fuel cell.  Click here to see a video animation of this process created by the U.S. Department of Energy.

After observing this complex process, and marveling at the technical innovation, one might wonder, “Why go to all of this trouble?  Why use hydrogen as a fuel source?  Why not just use gasoline or another type of battery system?”  These are good questions, and are important to ask, when trying to determine if hydrogen is a viable fuel source for the future.  To see the answers to these questions, click on the link to my next blog entry, Hydrogen: Today and Tomorrow.

This is a Honda FC Sport.  Do you like the design?  It runs on hydrogen powered P.E.M. fuel cells!