PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD A relatively neat thing quietly happened midmonth, when Neah Power of Bothell, Wash., demonstrated what appears to be the first significant technical upgrade to basic fuel cell design in 20 years.
Its methanol-fueled prototype works both in the presence and absence of oxygen, so it's good for pretty much everything, from tiny devices to maritime, aerospace and similar applications. The research was partly funded by the Navy, and they name Hobie Cat as one of their customers, which is incredibly cool. As a long-time windward-pontoon-submerger-and-high-speed-cartwheel-roller of cheap, roto-molded Hobie catamarans in race situations, I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of expensive trouble I can get into with fuel-cell-equipped next-gen Hobie sailcraft.
The Neah technology is based on chip fabrication—it's all about using photolithography and deposition to inscribe and build up channels and catalytic pathways on silicon. Their strangely uninformative Peter-Gabriel-influenced YouTube video hints about it—their much more informative white paper goes into some detail.
The key: Most all fuel cells employ a membrane surfaced with an electrolyte that separates protons from the fuel (positive charges) and thus builds up a potential difference between anode and cathode. This so-called Proton Exchange Membrane technology has quite a few limitations, including the fact that the desired reaction only happens on the face of that 2-D membrane, which limits cell charge density.
The Neah technology, by contrast, creates a similar effect by using a porous-silicon anode and cathode to increase reaction surface area. An oxidant/electrolyte mixture, obtained from a compartmentalized cartridge, enters on the cathode side, driven by a MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems)-based on-chip pump. A fuel-electrolyte mixture enters from the same cartridge on the anode side. Water by-product is routed back to another compartment of the cartridge for eventual removal; CO2 is released to the air. Fuel, oxidant, electrolyte and catalyst react within the pores in the terminal constructs, and these porous silicon structures can be arranged in stacks and other configurations to increase power output, without separating positive and negative regions of the device with a membrane or other barrier.
The result is current: 8W was produced across repeated cartridge exchanges in the recent demonstration. The closed-loop process does not require exposure to ambient air, and because it uses the fuel/oxidant/electrolyte supply cartridge as a reservoir for water by-product leaving the reaction system, it also avoids the problem of venting hot water in the region of the device.
The silicon fuel cells can be scaled up or down, Neah says, to replace batteries in almost any application, and do so at a fraction of lithium battery weights. Neah plans to go directly to partners in the semiconductor and MEMS industries to evolve their reference designs and prototypes into products, which it hopes will let it swiftly bring this technology to market without large capital investment.
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