University fuel cell extracts hydrogen from air
Thursday, October 27, 2005
"The prospect of running small devices on electricity generated from a simple fuel cell running on atmospheric hydrogen and oxygen has been raised by research at the University of Oxford. Professor Fraser Armstrong used an enzyme rather than an expensive platinum catalyst to promote the oxidation of hydrogen, and his ‘biofuel’ cell generated electricity with no membrane – conventionally used to separate the reactants in the cell. It also worked in the presence of carbon monoxide, which poisons most catalysts. “For small applications, maybe even nano[scale], our fuel cell will produce electricity from just traces of hydrogen in air,” said Armstrong. “That’s really novel because you can’t do that with any conventional fuel cell, you need a membrane.”" Source: electronicsweekly.com
posted by Frank @ 10:10 PM,
