Military Looks To Northeastern Professor For A Future Powered By Fuel Cells

Science Daily.com ^ | 2004-04-22 | Northeastern University

[aculeus]

BOSTON, Mass. – “The goal is to get off the wall,” says Professor Sanjeev Mukerjee of Northeastern’s chemistry department when he talks about his work developing long-lasting, non-polluting fuel cells. Getting “off the wall,” he explains, means no more plugging in, no more cell phone battery chargers, and no more looking for an outlet for laptops, digital cameras or PDAs. Mukerjee and the firm Protonics have already been contracted by the military to develop portable fuel cells for soldiers in the field. In a future that may be as close as ten years away, Mukerjee envisions small, light, portable cartridges that will easily generate 5,000 hours of power – a far cry from today’s rechargeable batteries. And when the cartridge, powered by clean hydrogen or methanol, is empty, he says, it can be tossed and replaced without ever needing a wall socket.

Mukerjee is a big dreamer, and his dreams are moving rapidly toward reality in the form of two recent start-ups that are putting his ideas into practice. The young firms, Protonics Corp and Integrated Fuel Cell Inc., are working with Mukerjee to create different kinds of fuel cells, including the much-vaunted hydrogen fueled car. That dream may be decades away, says Mukerjee, but they are much closer, he believes, to powering small, personal devices with disposable cartridges. The fuel cells that Protonics is developing for the U.S. military would power the high-tech gear like GPS and night-vision goggles that rapidly suck battery power and weigh down the troops.

Integrated Fuel Cell, Inc. is working on an automotive fuel cell, concentrating on methanol as the reactive ingredient. Methanol, like hydrogen, has no polluting by-products. It is extracted from coal or natural gas, and has the advantage, at about 46 cents per gallon, of being far cheaper than oil and independent of oil-related politics.

This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Northeastern University.

[Bikers4Bush]

Bump for later.

[Bikers4Bush]

Bump for later.

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[Saturnalia]

Obviously not completely independent if natural gas is used as a methanol feedstock.

[TBall]

MCEL- Millennium Cell got a nice little bump from today's news.

[steveegg]

But, but, but hydrogen hydroxide is a greenhouse gas </sarcasm>

[DentsRun]

I think a lot of reporters who cover the energy industry somehow have the idea that hydrogen is free for the asking and we can all drive hydrogen powered cars and won't be dependent on OPEC anymore. I don't know where they think we're going to get the energy to produce the hydrogen (if they think about it at all). I'm sure they're not thinking nuclear power.

[Bikers4Bush]

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I'd say so.

[expatpat]

Unfortunately, they haven't made much progress in the last 40 years, since Tyco fuel-cell research in the early 1960's that I remember. So don't hold your breath!

[taxcontrol]

Interesting related paper:

http://www.fe.doe.gov/news/techlines/97/tl_kngs.html

[Fee]

I don't think there is enough platnium on earth to provide the catalysts needed to run all the fuel cell cars and trucks envisioned.

[steveegg]

I don't think there is enough platnium on earth to provide the catalysts needed to run all the fuel cell cars and trucks envisioned.

Which brings up yet another thing we can't mine/drill for ("yet another" because every raw source of hydrogen already is on the envirowhacko "don't go get" list).

[Wonder Warthog]

"I don't think there is enough platnium on earth to provide the catalysts needed to run all the fuel cell cars and trucks envisioned."

R&D has dropped the platinum requirement by at least one factor of ten (and probably more). Last time I checked (a couple of years ago), this was no longer considered a significant limitation. Add to that the continuing work by catalyst chemists to develop non-platinum catalysts.

[Professional Engineer]

It's also a universal solvent. It'll kill us all!

[Mamzelle]

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