A “fuel cell” is a device that generates an electric current from the chemical reactions entailed in combining hydrogen and oxygen into water. Fuel cells typically employ an expensive catalyzing compound to accelerate that chemical reaction.
Fuel cells can be used in place of batteries or other power sources and may offer advantages for higher utilization and heavier modes of transportation such as trucks or trains as well as for corporate or industrial applications such as back-up power for data centers. When the hydrogen that is fed into a fuel cell is produced using a renewable energy source such as solar or wind, the electricity generated by the fuel cell is essentially free of carbon emissions.
Last week, scientists at Cornell University announced a meaningful step forward in reducing the cost of making fuel cells. The Director of the Energy Materials Center at Cornell University, Héctor Abruña, and his team have engineered compounds that can catalyze a fuel cell’s chemical reaction without the use of platinum or other expensive metals. Moreover, the article references 10% energy leakage, which, if I am reading it correctly, represents a big step forward in energy conversion efficiency. These important advances, in conjunction with R&D efforts underway around the world related to similar technologies, point to rapidly bending cost and efficiency curves for hydrogen that could accelerate efforts to address the most difficult to decarbonize sectors of the global economy.