Bacon fuel cell

F. T. Bacon, Fuel Cells, in Trends in Electrochemistry, J. O M. Bockris, D. Rand, andB. Welch, eds., Plenum, New York (1976). An address to the meeting ofthe Ivth Australian Conference in Electrochemistry. 

The alkaline fuel cell (AFC), also known as the Bacon fuel cell after its British inventor, is one of the most developed fuel-cell technologies and is the cell that flew Man to the Moon. NASA has used alkahne fuel cells since the mid-1960s, in Apollo-series missions and on the Space Shuttle. [2]... 

The AFC can be categorized into three main configurations, static electrolyte, mobile electrolyte, and charged electrolyte systems. The Bacon fuel cell is an example of a mobile electrolyte system. In this system, the electrolyte is... 

Bacon makes first practical Alkaline fuel cell (5kW) (1959)... 

The problem was solved by Francis Bacon, a British scientist and engineer, who developed an idea proposed by Sir William Grove in 18.39. A fuel cell generates electricity directly from a chemical reaction, as in a battery, but uses reactants that are supplied continuously, as in an engine. A fuel cell that runs on hydrogen and oxygen is currently installed on the space shuttle (see Fig. L.l). An advantage of this fuel cell is that the only product of the cell reaction, water, can be used for life support. 

Dr. William W. Jacques further explored the carbon approach in 1896. His fuel cells had a carbon rod central anode in the electrolyte of molten potassium hydroxide. He made a fuel cell system of 100 cylindrical cells, which produced as much as 1500 W. Francis T. Bacon worked on fuel cells to produce alkaline systems that did not use noble metal catalysts in the 1930s. He developed and built a 6 kW alkaline hydrogen-oxygen system in 1959. In the same year, Dr. Harry Ihrig introduced... 

British engineer Francis Thomas Bacon demonstrates the first practical fuel cell. 

Fuel cell (Bacon) The first practical fuel cell developed by British engineer... 

Fuel cells did not boom again for more than 50 years, although there was occasional activity in Europe. Then another person appeared on the scene, a man in the same vein as Sir William Grove, but much, much more persistent. This was Francis Thomas Bacon, and since it was he who stood directly behind NASA s use of fuel cells in the space flights, it can truly be said that more than any other individual, it was... 

Alkaline Fuel Cell (AFC). This cell follows directly from the one that Bacon and Watson produced at Cambridge in the 1950s and is the basis of cells developed for NASA (by International Fuel Cells and predecessor companies (United Technologies Power Systems Divisions, Pratt and Whitney Aircraft) since the Apollo moon program, where pure H2 fuel is available. 

Fig. 13.16. Structure of porous electrode in the Bacon-Pratt and Whitney fuel cell. (Reprinted from J. O M. Bockris and S. Srinivasan, Fuel Cells Their Electrochemistry, Fig. 22, copyright 1969. Reproduced with permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies.)...

The history of fuel cells is lengthy. The first fuel cell, indeed, was produced in 1839 by a British judge, Sir William Grove. It was not until 1959 that Tom Bacon, a member of the family of Francis T. Bacon (who first enunciated the scientific method of experimentation and communication) made practical a 5-kW fuel cell. Tom Bacon,... 

Professor Francis T. Bacon of Cambridge University in England builds the first hydrogen-air fuel cell, which powers a welding machine. 

Alkaline fuel cells (AFC) — The first practical -+fuel cell (FC) was introduced by -> Bacon [i]. This was an alkaline fuel cell using a nickel anode, a nickel oxide cathode, and an alkaline aqueous electrolyte solution. The alkaline fuel cell (AFC) is classified among the low-temperature FCs. As such, it is advantageous over the protonic fuel cells, namely the -> polymer-electrolyte-membrane fuel cells (PEM) and the - phosphoric acid fuel cells, which require a large amount of platinum, making them too expensive. The fast oxygen reduction kinetics and the non-platinum cathode catalyst make the alkaline cell attractive. 

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