Powering clean, efficient cars is just one way fuel cell technology could accelerate humanity into a sustainable energy future, but unfortunately, the technology has been a bit sluggish. Now, engineers may be able to essentially turbocharge fuel cells with a new catalyst.
The sluggishness comes from a chemical bottleneck, the rate of processing oxygen, a key ingredient that helps fuel cells, which are related to batteries, produce electricity. The new catalyst, a nanotechnology material developed by engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, markedly speeds up oxygen processing and is the subject of a new study.
Partly to accommodate oxygen's limitations, fuel cells usually require pure hydrogen fuel, which reacts with the oxygen taken in from the air, but the costs of producing the hydrogen have been prohibitive. The new catalyst is a potential game-changer.
"It can easily convert chemical fuel into electricity with high efficiency," said Meilin Liu, who led the study and is a Regents' Professor in Georgia Tech's School of Material Science and Engineering. "It can let you use readily available fuels like methane or natural gas or just use hydrogen fuel much more efficiently," Liu said.
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