
Toyota Still Thinks Hydrogen Fuel Cells Are the Future - joeschmoe3
https://jalopnik.com/toyota-still-thinks-hydrogen-fuel-cells-are-the-future-1843928962
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aurizon
In some respects a fuel cell is like a bettery. You use the fuel cell to
combine Hydrogen with Oxygen and you capture that reaction energy in water.
Going the other way you split water into hydrogen and oxygen by adding that
reaction energy. They need to make these reactions into reversible half cell
potentials and there has been a hunt for the proper catalytic membreans or
surfaces that will do this for years and years and which will not gradually
degrade or get poisoned by stray funny atoms in the reaction streams. This
much like the chase to improve Lithium batteries over the past 20 years. They
make incremental progress and have functional systems now, but they do not
have highly efficient ones. Hydrogen storage is one problem. They have made
some hydride based hydrogen storage tanks, but they are not fast fill. They
have made some that use air, but sulfur from SO2 in the air poison the
membranes/catalysts they use. All this said, after another 20 years they may
well solve all the problems - there is a lot to be said for Japanese
perseverance.

