How Things Work: Fuel Cells

Curious about fuel cells and electric powered motor vehicles? In this appealing episode of How Factors Do the job, we will take you by way of the interesting mechanics of gas cells and how they’re utilized to propel electrical automobiles.

Approximated looking through time: 3 minutes, 39 seconds.

If you cannot watch the movie, you can browse the video transcription beneath:
Edited for clarity and readability

Pieter: (00:16)

Welcome to Let us Discuss Automotive. And in this week’s episode on How Matters Operate, I’m likely to be taking you via a technological know-how that you’ve possibly presently heard of called fuel cells. And I am heading to show you how we use gasoline cells to propel electric cars. Now in past episodes, we have spoken a ton about electrical automobiles, and in simple fact, you could possibly have even found the section exactly where we test drove the Tesla Product X. Now fuel cells differ considerably in the way that they operate compared to traditional batteries. Now, if we have a glance at a guide-acid battery, it can be rather a horrible factor mainly because we’ve bought an anode and a cathode, and we have acquired an acid normally acting as our electrolytes. So it is really quite a messy affair and not pretty environmentally friendly. And usual electric powered automobiles use lithium-ion batteries. And the moment yet again, those people lithium-ion batteries are essentially fairly devastating if we have a seem at the complete footprint that happens in terms of mining them and then disposing of them at the stop of the day–not incredibly good for the setting. 

Pieter: (01:20)

So some of the makers early on when it arrived to the structure of electrical automobiles, in fact, invested very greatly in gas mobile engineering. Now fuel cells have been utilized for a long time in the room station, for example, as a pretty cleanse and productive way of supplying electrical energy. And I’m heading to choose you via really briefly, how fuel cells function and why I think that some of the brands actually really should have on thinking about utilizing hydrogen-driven gasoline cells as an electricity supply for electric automobiles. And I think at the time I’ve proven you, you will agree with me that this, perhaps, is the way to go. 

So generally, what we have is a great deal the exact same as a guide-acid battery we have an anode and a cathode, but the variation listed here is that the anode over below is filled up with hydrogen, and on the other side, the cathode has oxygen. And we also have a catalyst, and this catalyst is typically built out of platinum. And what this catalyst does is it splits up our hydrogen into protons and electrons. Now what the oxygen does on this facet, is the oxygen draws in the hydrogen protons and electrons to this facet. But this membrane, which is named a proton trade membrane, is so wonderful that it can actually filter out the protons and allow for the protons to go through. But the electrons are far too significant to go through this membrane, and so what comes about to the electrons is that we pressure them to vacation a further path to get to the other aspect.

Pieter: (03:05)

And so what we have in excess of here is all of our electrons moving by this extended route, or this channel, until they pop out on this aspect. Now the genius powering this is that we know, as with any other battery, when we have a stream of electrons, we have present move and if we’ve obtained latest flow, we are manufacturing energy. And all that comes about when the electrons get to this facet of the stack, is that the hydrogen protons and electrons then kind hydrogen all over again, and the hydrogen then interacts with the oxygen and creates harmless h2o. So the only byproduct of this battery, in reality, is warmth and a very little bit of water. And as extensive as we have received a constant source of hydrogen, so we have a hydrogen tank in our vehicle, for instance, then we’re going to have a regular latest move which is made by means of this membrane.

Pieter: (04:04)
And if we have a whole large amount of these stacks put jointly, we then have sufficient present-day that is created to, in reality, source sufficient ability for our electrical motors. 

So from my viewpoint, I believe that the fuel cells are the way to go. The only obstacle, of program, is that they are really, pretty pricey and that has, I imagine to a big extent, place the brakes on their improvement. Which is a tiny bit of a pity due to the fact I believe that it is a amazing, clean alternate to even lithium-ion batteries. 

So I hope you located that handy and have a far better knowing on how gasoline cells get the job done and right until our upcoming episode on How Matters Function, I look forward to viewing you then. Cheers every person.

To watch the complete episode, take a look at: https://www.fb.com/watch/LetsTalkAutomotive/

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