As oil and gasoline prices rise, much hay is being made
regarding the possibilities of power cells as a solution to our oil addictions.
Here’s a basic primer on power cells.
Power Cells As Alternative to Oil
More than a few politicians have argued that power cells
have the potential to cure all our energy problems. They argue power cells
offer clean, efficient alternatives to the gasoline and oil burning combustion
engine we all use in our vehicles. They also argue that switching to power
cells will go a long way to dealing with global warming issues since this form
of power does not produce the greenhouse gases seen with oil products. Instead, they produce water and heat. For
once, the politicians may just be right for once.
Power cells use hydrogen or hydrogen derived sources to
create electricity. Much like a single solar cell is not particularly good at
producing power, a single power cell produces a fraction of the energy required
to power most things of consequence. Like solar, the cell must be combined with
others to get the necessary production. Temperature and the pressure of the
hydrogen are also factors. To really make things work, such as a car, most
power cells are actually a combination of hundreds or thousands of sub-cells.
This, of course, results in problems of storage and stability. The more cells
there are, the more space they take up. The more cells there are sitting next
to each other, the hotter they get.
The current problems with these hydrogen power cells are
numerous. They do not produce power on a cost-effective basis. They have not
proven to be particularly durable, which means they need to replace them fairly
frequently runs up the cost of owning them. A practical, but significant, the problem is how to store and provide the hydrogen to users on a daily basis.
Hydrogen can be unstable, which makes for big, pretty and expensive bangs. Most
of these problems, however, will be overcome as technology progresses.
Once technology advances, the applications power cells can
be used for are nearly endless. They can be used to run your laptop or your
car. They can be used to provide electricity and heat in your home as well as
your business. In our technology crazed society, they will even power your cell
phones. If it can be run on electricity, power cells should be able to make it
work.
Power cells aren’t current and only answer to our oil the problem, but that may change in the relatively short future.
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