Researchers at Ontario’s University of Waterloo have developed a fuel cell they say could potentially make the technology cheap enough to replace the gasoline engine. Fuel-cell vehicles are electric cars that make their own power by producing electricity within the fuel cell, using ambient air and an on-board supply of hydrogen. Xianguo Li, director of the university’s Fuel Cell and Green Energy Lab, said the new cell may last as much as ten times longer than current fuel-cell technology. This improvement would make them economically practical to power vehicles, if they are mass-produced. “With our design approach, the cost could be comparable or even cheaper than gasoline engines,” Li said. “We have found a way to lower costs and still satisfy durability and performance expectations.” The researchers originally concentrated on hybrids, looking at ways to replace the hybrid system’s gasoline engine with a fuel cell. However, the high cost of current fuel cells is an issue. The new design makes the fuel cell far more durable by delivering a constant amount of electricity, rather than a fluctuating flow. Li collaborated with researchers and professors in Waterloo and in Sweden on the design. A paper on their work describes the design as three fuel-cell stacks that each work at a fixed power output, but are switched on and off to shorten the time each one is active. The results showed that the durability of the cells increased by 11.8 times in city driving, 4.8 times in highway driving, and 6.9 times in a combination of the two. The cost savings would come from the cells not having to be “over-designed” to make them last
Origin: New fuel cell design could make hydrogen-powered cars cheaper