Grove’s fuel cell

Other fuels were also tried in the early stages of fuel cell development. Coal, the major fuel at that time, was considered as a candidate. Attempts to replace hydrogen with coal resulted in the invention of alkaline fuel cells (AFCs) and molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs). Mond used reformate gas from coal, which contained abundant hydrogen, as the fuel, with the intention of scaling up Grove s fuel cell to produce electric power. However, impurities poisoned the catalyst and made Mond s design impractical. 

Fig. 8.1 Grove s fuel cell from 1839 (a) and gas chain" from 1842 (b).

Grove s fuel cell is one of the simplest examples, the reactions for which are shown in Table 1-2. They are the same for polymer electrolyte fuel cells. 

Table 1-2. Electrode reactions for Grove s fuel cell...

Fuel Processing for High Efficiency Fuel Cell Systems," J.R. Rostrup-Nielsen, L.J. Christiansen, and K. Aasberg-Petersen, Haldor Topsoe A/S, Grove IH Fuel Cell Symposium, September 1993. 

Benicewicz, B. C., Yu, S., Xiao, L. and Perry, K. 2007. Advances in polybenzimidazole (PBI) membrane materials. In Advances in materials for proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems, Pacific Grove, CA, Feb. 18-21. 

Electrolysis of water, mentioned above, had been described by the British chemists WilUam Nicholson (1753-1815) and Sir Anthony Carlisle (1768-1842) in 1800. But Grove s experiment seemed to go in the opposite direction. This reverse eleoctrolysis is the basic operation of the fuel cell—the combination of hydrogen gas (H ) and oxygen gas (O ) to produce water and energy, as described in the following chemical equation ... 

The fuel cell is nothing new, despite the excitement it is now generating. It has been around since 1839, when Welsh physics professor William Grove created an operating model based on platinum and zinc components. Much later, the U.S. Apollo space program used fuel cells for certain power needs in the Apollo space vehicles that traveled from the Earth to the Moon. 

Phosphoric acid fuel cells, as its name says, use phosphoric acid as the electrolyte—Grove s first fuel cell used sulfuric acid. They are the... 

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... 

Fuel cells have had an abnormally long development time. The year 1839 was the date of Sir William Grove s discovery. According to a report prepared by the National Science Foundation, the average time for bringing a scientific concept from its first published expression to commercialization is 75 years. Fuel cells have taken more than twice as long. 

S. Chalk, J. F. Miller, and S. R. Venkataswaren, paper presented at Fifth Grove Fuel Cell Symposium, London, 1997. A review of the fuel cell programs of the U.S. Dept, of Energy. 

New perspectives arising from isothermal oxidation. The next chapter of this book describes the greatly altered perspective of the fuel cell industry, when Grove s ideas are updated. The second chapter describes the detail of Regenesys, or ESS-RGN. This system has changed hands, as noted above, and information is available from http //www.vrbpower.com/. (The initials VRB stand for Vanadium Redox Battery, a low-power alternative to Regenesys.) The new 2005 VRB Power Systems shorthand is ESS-VRB for 2.5 to 10 MW and ESS-RGN for 10 to 100 MW. In Chapter 2 the reader will be acquainted with ESS-RGN, one of the two VRB fuel cell systems (incompressible liquid based) which can be termed complete . The redox battery uses small pumps as circulators. 

Grove s proposal for a hydrogen economy, based on imperfect fuel cells and electrolysers using compressible gases, is therefore doubtful, and has become an unlikely competitor for ESS-RGN. 

Borglum, B. (2003). From cells to systems Global Thermoelectric s critical path approach to planar SOFC development. Presentation at "S Grove Fuel Cell Symposium 2003", http //www.globalte.com. 

The fuel cell effect was first discovered in 1838 (published in 1989) by C.F. Schoenbein who found the inverse electrolysis principle in his experiment using platinum electrodes immersed in dilute sulfuric acid solution.However, the invention of the fuel cell is credited to W.R. Grove who demonstrated Schoenbein s discovery on a practical scale by inventing the gas battery during 1839-1845. Fig. 1 shows an early experiment in which hydrogen and oxygen gases... 

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