ENVIRONMENT
REPORT - July 25, 2003: Fuel Cell Cost-Cutting
By Caty Weaver
This is the VOA Special English Environment
Report.
Researchers say they have found a way to reduce
the cost of some fuel cell production. The researchers are from Tufts
University in the American state of Massachusetts.
Fuel cells create heat and electric power without
pollution. Fuel cell technology uses hydrogen to create electricity.
Hydrogen gas passes over a metal, like platinum or gold. Electrons from
the hydrogen separate to form electricity. Proton particles that remain
in the atom combine with oxygen to form water.
Some fuel cells require a lot of metal. And
platinum costs even more than gold. Prices went up at the beginning
of this year. That was after President Bush said the government would
spend more than one-thousand-million dollars on fuel cell research.
But the scientists from Tufts say their findings
could save millions of dollars. Their work involved the agent that causes
the chemical reaction used to make hydrogen. Normally that agent is
about ten percent gold or other costly metal.
The researchers used a chemical to slowly remove
the gold from the agent. They discovered that the agent remained effective
even after they removed ninety percent of the metal.
Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos is a professor
of chemical and biological engineering who led the work. She says it
will help researchers find a way to produce clean energy from fuel cells
in a cost effective way. Another scientist says they must continue research
to learn if smaller amounts of costly metals will work in other fuel
cell processes.
The National Science Foundation provided money
for the research. The findings appear in Science.
That publication also reported about a new,
less costly agent for making hydrogen. The report says scientists at
the University of Wisconsin made the agent from tin, aluminum and nickel.
They say the process works as well with these as it does with platinum
and other metals that cost much more.
Some automobile makers have tested hydrogen-powered
vehicles. The American space agency has used fuel cells to produce electricity
since the nineteen-sixties. But cost is an issue. Currently, hydrogen
costs four times more to produce than gasoline. And fuel cells cost
ten times more than traditional gasoline-burning engines.
This VOA Special English Environment Report
was written by Caty Weaver.
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