[extropy-chat] Fuel cell vehicles arriving in 2005

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Jan 09, 2005 at 08:41:13PM -0500, Brent Neal wrote:

> >Why bother, I wonder, direct-alcohol fuel cells don't need no steenkin
> >reformers (of course methanol reforms completely cleanly).
> 
> 
> The problem is that the catalyst membranes used to rip the 
> protons off of light alcohols are prohibitively expensive 
> for large wattage applications.  Works fine in Toshiba's 

This is a current chemistry/engineering limitation. There's no physical
reason for having expensive catalysts/high proton mobility membrane
materials. 

> little cell phone fuel cells (on the order of a few mm^2), 
> but I doubt that they've been able to manufacture more 
> than a handful of membranes large enough for a car.

How much car do you need to move a single primate? Right now an SUV is
somewhere between 2 and 3 tons, which is ridiculous.
 
> IMO, DMFC catalysts represent one of the defining materials 
> engineering problems of this decade.


-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144            http://www.leitl.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
http://moleculardevices.org         http://nanomachines.net
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20050110/2152b5e3/attachment.bin>