Handicaps Preventing a Broader Commercialization of Fuel Cells

6 HANDICAPS PREVENTING A BROADER COMMERCIALIZATION OF FUEL CELLS 

In previous sections it was shown that for technical and economic reasons the number of high-power stationary power units based on fuel cells is relatively limited tens for large units and hundreds (up to thousands) for smaller ones. At the same time, there are very large market demands (hundred of thousands) for low-power and small power units for portable devices. During future decades a considerable increase in market demand for medium-power units for electric vehicles and other mobile applications (e.g., mobile fuel cells) can be anticipated. 

Portable electronic devices need very low power for their operation, often milliwatts, or at most a few watts up to 10 W. Small low-power fuel cells designed as power supplies for portable devices have been named micro-fuel cells or mini-fuel cells, the latter term being preferred. The term of a miniaturization of fuel cells is also current. The power needed for most electric vehicles and other mobile apphcations is about some tenth of a kilowatt. 

Mini-fuel cells and mobile fuel cells have some specific features. One of the most important jobs of ordinary (large-sized) fuel cells is the highly efficient conversion of chemical fuel energy to electrical energy. For higher fuel utilization efficiency, power plants involving such fuel cells include many peripherals to monitor and regulate the rate of the fuel supply, as weU as external parameters such as temperature and pressure that influence this efficiency. 

Since both mini-fuel cells and vehicle-size fuel cells are intended for a very large contingent of consumers, they must be suited for large-scale production so as to be available at reasonable low prices. For different reasons, present conventional fuel cell batteries, described in previous chapters, have not been able to satisfy all these requirements, and new approaches in designing fuel cells were needed. Such approaches were described in two chapters Chapter 17, on new designs for mini-fuel cell batteries, and Chapter 18, on entirely new, nonconventional design principles which can be applied to cells of any size, not only to small ones. 

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