Polymer Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

#The polymer exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is one of the most promising fuel cell technologies. This type of fuel cell will probably end up powering cars, buses and maybe even your house. PEMFC  use hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air to produce electricity.


Fuel Cell Chemistry:
A proton exchange membrane fuel cell transforms the chemical energy liberated during the electrochemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen to electrical energy, as opposed to the direct combustion of hydrogen and oxygen gases to produce thermal energy.

A stream of hydrogen is delivered to the anode side of the membrane electrode assembly (MEA). At the anode side it is catalytically split into protons and electrons. This oxidation half-cell reaction is represented by:
At the Anode:

 2H2----->4H+ + 4e-    Eo = 0V

The newly formed protons permeate through the polymer electrolyte membrane to the cathode side. The electrons travel along an external load circuit to the cathode side of the MEA, thus creating the current output of the fuel cell. Meanwhile, a stream of oxygen is delivered to the cathode side of the MEA. At the cathode side oxygen molecules react with the protons permeating through the polymer electrolyte membrane and the electrons arriving through the external circuit to form water molecules. This reduction half-cell reaction is represented by:


At the Cathode:

   O2 + 4H+ + 4e-  -----> 2H2O   Eo = 1.229V




Overall reaction:
Overall: 2H2 + O2------->2H2O + energy

 Eo = 1.229V

thanks for the post.
When i was in year 12 non medicals in india we studied about fuel cell but it wasnt in that much depth.
i think there was some of the big questions!

more amount of energy is required to break bonds of H-0-H ( O-H) bond. so the question is are we introducing hydrogen ( which is expensive)in the fuel cell?

Hydrogen reaction if we don't carry out properly may end up in blowing the things up. :

yea dude you are absolutely right basically i would say  fuel cells were developed even before the IC engiens came into picture but because of limited reserach and complications related to fuel cellsm,at that time scientist stopped thinking abut it but they came back in picture with nasa's space mission that was  fully powered with fuel cell...
and ya hydroge storage  and flooding are   two  major problems associated with fuell cell..

Hydrogen storage problem has been solved for stationary fuel cell but still there is long way to go  if u think about automobiles.....we have been looking into reforming hydrogen from different fuels such as hydrocarbons and metal hydrides which can solve storage and safety related issues of hydrogen but these processes r really expensive...... but myself  being into the same field i can see good work being done in this field....

dude if you  or anybody else have any question about fuel cells  you guys are most welcome to ask..

hmm interesting
then youll be carrying out series of reactions first to get hydrogen if am not mistaken. In that case we are actually trying to be on the safe side but efficiency is going to be less if am not wrong. because some amount of energy is being used up before even the fuel as fed in.
Hydrocarbons? isnt that what we are using at the moment

yea bro thats what we r trying to do but still the efficiency we r getting if far better than IC engines...  nd moreover  we can minimise the energy lost in  reforming reaction by using  heat recovery system..  I posted one of my research paper in different post here on PJ.. Go through that paper  that might give you good idea about how we can recover energy used in reforming reaction...

and yea further we can use  fuel cell in hybrid system ... using fuell cell together with IC engine or gas turbine which ll further improve efficiency...

That is nice! Thx 4 sharing

here are some applications of fuel cells which are given below-

dude there is still a lot to doo...Hydrogen itself is big problem..Storing hydrogen is one of the biggest issure...Yea but you r right you might see fuel cell soon powering automobiles

thats  true bro. dnt worry hes copy pasting from internet anyways

koyee gal naiji.. je copy paste v kitta.. appa nu kakaji nu encourage karna chahida.Atleast he is utilizing his energy on gud post :happy:

Yeah agree not much jattitude stuff .he needs to get over it