Hydrogen fuel cells. Chemistry and current. Hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell

AT modern life chemical sources Current is all around us: batteries in flashlights, batteries in mobile phones, hydrogen fuel cells, which are already used in some cars. The rapid development of electrochemical technologies can lead to the fact that in the near future, instead of machines on gasoline engines we will be surrounded only by electric cars, phones will no longer drain quickly, and every house will have its own fuel cell electric generator. One of the joint programs of the Ural Federal University with the Institute of High-Temperature Electrochemistry of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in partnership with which we publish this article, is devoted to improving the efficiency of electrochemical storage and power generators.

Today there are many different types batteries, among which it is increasingly difficult to navigate. It is far from clear to everyone how a battery differs from a supercapacitor and why a hydrogen fuel cell can be used without fear of harming the environment. In this article, we will talk about how chemical reactions are used to generate electricity, what is the difference between the main types of modern chemical current sources, and what prospects open up for electrochemical energy.

Chemistry as a source of electricity

First, let's look at why chemical energy can be used to generate electricity at all. The thing is that in redox reactions, electrons are transferred between two different ions. If two halves chemical reaction spread in space so that oxidation and reduction take place separately from each other, then it is possible to make sure that an electron that breaks away from one ion does not immediately fall on the second, but first passes along a path predetermined for it. This reaction can be used as a source electric current.

This concept was first implemented in the 18th century by the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani. The action of a traditional galvanic cell is based on the reactions of reduction and oxidation of metals with different activity. For example, a classical cell is a galvanic cell in which zinc is oxidized and copper is reduced. The reduction and oxidation reactions take place, respectively, at the cathode and anode. And so that copper and zinc ions do not fall into "foreign territory", where they can react with each other directly, a special membrane is usually placed between the anode and cathode. As a result, a potential difference arises between the electrodes. If you connect the electrodes, for example, with a light bulb, then current begins to flow in the resulting electrical circuit and the light bulb lights up.

Diagram of a galvanic cell

Wikimedia Commons

In addition to the materials of the anode and cathode, an important component of the chemical current source is the electrolyte, inside which ions move and on the border of which all electrochemical reactions proceed with the electrodes. In this case, the electrolyte does not have to be liquid - it can be both a polymer and a ceramic material.

The main disadvantage of a galvanic cell is its limited operating time. As soon as the reaction goes to the end (that is, the entire gradually dissolving anode is completely consumed), such an element will simply stop working.

Finger alkaline batteries

Rechargeable

The first step towards expanding the capabilities of chemical current sources was the creation of a battery - a current source that can be recharged and therefore reused. To do this, scientists simply proposed to use reversible chemical reactions. After completely discharging the battery for the first time, using external source current, the reaction that has taken place in it can be started in reverse direction. This will restore the original state so that the battery can be used again after recharging.

Automotive Lead Acid Battery

To date, many various types batteries, which differ in the type of chemical reaction that takes place in them. The most common types of batteries are lead-acid (or simply lead) batteries, which are based on the oxidation-reduction reaction of lead. Such devices have a fairly long service life, and their energy consumption is up to 60 watt-hours per kilogram. Even more popular recently are lithium-ion batteries based on the lithium redox reaction. The energy intensity of modern lithium-ion batteries now exceeds 250 watt-hours per kilogram.

Li-ion battery for mobile phone

The main problems of lithium-ion batteries are their low efficiency at negative temperatures, rapid aging and increased explosiveness. And due to the fact that lithium metal reacts very actively with water to form hydrogen gas and oxygen is released when the battery burns, spontaneous combustion of a lithium-ion battery is very difficult traditional ways firefighting. In order to improve the safety of such a battery and speed up its charging time, scientists propose a cathode material that prevents the formation of dendritic lithium structures, and add substances to the electrolyte that form explosive structures, and components that ignite in the early stages.

Solid electrolyte

As another less obvious way to increase the efficiency and safety of batteries, chemists have proposed not to limit themselves to liquid electrolytes in chemical current sources, but to create an entirely solid state current source. In such devices, there are no liquid components at all, but there is a layered structure of a solid anode, a solid cathode, and a solid electrolyte between them. The electrolyte at the same time performs the function of the membrane. Charge carriers in a solid electrolyte can be various ions, depending on its composition and the reactions that take place on the anode and cathode. But they are always small enough ions that can move relatively freely through the crystal, for example, H + protons, Li + lithium ions, or O 2- oxygen ions.

Hydrogen fuel cells

rechargeable and special measures safety make batteries much more promising sources of current than conventional batteries, but still, each battery contains a limited amount of reagents inside, and therefore a limited supply of energy, and each time the battery must be recharged to resume its performance.

To make a battery “infinite”, it is possible to use as an energy source not those substances that are inside the cell, but fuel specially pumped through it. Best of all, a substance that is as simple as possible in composition, environmentally friendly and available in abundance on Earth is best suited as such a fuel.

The most suitable substance of this type is hydrogen gas. Its oxidation with air oxygen to form water (according to the reaction 2H 2 + O 2 → 2H 2 O) is a simple redox reaction, and electron transport between ions can also be used as a current source. The reaction proceeding in this case is a kind of reverse reaction to the water electrolysis reaction (in which, under the action of an electric current, water decomposes into oxygen and hydrogen), and for the first time such a scheme was proposed back in the middle of the 19th century.

But despite the fact that the circuit looks quite simple, creating an efficient device based on this principle is not at all a trivial task. To do this, it is necessary to separate the flows of oxygen and hydrogen in space, ensure the transport of the necessary ions through the electrolyte, and reduce possible energy losses at all stages of operation.

circuit diagram operation of a hydrogen fuel cell

The scheme of a working hydrogen fuel cell is very similar to the scheme of a chemical current source, but contains additional channels for supplying fuel and oxidizer and removing reaction products and excess supplied gases. The electrodes in such an element are porous conductive catalysts. Gaseous fuel (hydrogen) is supplied to the anode, and an oxidizing agent (oxygen from the air) is supplied to the cathode, and at the boundary of each of the electrodes with the electrolyte, its own half-reaction takes place (oxidation of hydrogen and reduction of oxygen, respectively). In this case, depending on the type of fuel cell and the type of electrolyte, the formation of water itself can proceed either in the anode or cathode space.

Toyota hydrogen fuel cell

Joseph Brent / flickr

If the electrolyte is a proton-conducting polymer or ceramic membrane, an acid or alkali solution, then the charge carrier in the electrolyte is hydrogen ions. In this case, molecular hydrogen is oxidized at the anode to hydrogen ions, which pass through the electrolyte and react with oxygen there. If the oxygen ion O 2– is the charge carrier, as in the case of a solid oxide electrolyte, then oxygen is reduced to an ion at the cathode, this ion passes through the electrolyte and oxidizes hydrogen at the anode to form water and free electrons.

In addition to the hydrogen oxidation reaction for fuel cells, it was proposed to use other types of reactions. For example, instead of hydrogen, the reducing fuel could be methanol, which is oxidized by oxygen to carbon dioxide and water.

Fuel Cell Efficiency

Despite all the advantages of hydrogen fuel cells (such as environmental friendliness, virtually unlimited efficiency, compact size and high energy intensity), they also have a number of disadvantages. These include, first of all, the gradual aging of the components and the difficulties in storing hydrogen. It is on how to eliminate these shortcomings that scientists are working today.

It is currently proposed to increase the efficiency of fuel cells by changing the composition of the electrolyte, the properties of the catalyst electrode, and the geometry of the system (which provides the supply of fuel gases to desired point and reduce side effects). To solve the problem of storing hydrogen gas, materials containing platinum are used, for saturation of which, for example, graphene membranes.

As a result, it is possible to achieve an increase in the stability of the fuel cell and the lifetime of its individual components. Now the coefficient of conversion of chemical energy into electrical energy in such cells reaches 80 percent, and under certain conditions it can be even higher.

Huge prospects for hydrogen energy are associated with the possibility of combining fuel cells into whole batteries, turning them into electric generators with high power. Even now, electric generators operating on hydrogen fuel cells have a power of up to several hundred kilowatts and are used as power sources for vehicles.

Alternative electrochemical storage

In addition to classical electrochemical current sources, more unusual systems are also used as energy storage devices. One of these systems is a supercapacitor (or ionistor) - a device in which charge separation and accumulation occurs due to the formation of a double layer near a charged surface. At the electrode-electrolyte interface in such a device, ions of different signs line up in two layers, the so-called "double electric layer", forming a kind of very thin capacitor. The capacitance of such a capacitor, that is, the amount of accumulated charge, will be determined by the specific surface area of ​​the electrode material; therefore, it is advantageous to take porous materials with the maximum specific surface area as the material for supercapacitors.

Ionistors are champions among charge-discharge chemical current sources in terms of charge rate, which is an undoubted advantage of this type of device. Unfortunately, they are also record holders in terms of discharge speed. The energy density of ionistors is eight times less compared to lead batteries and 25 times less compared to lithium-ion. Classic "double-layer" ionistors do not use an electrochemical reaction at their core, and the term "capacitor" is most accurately applied to them. However, in those versions of ionistors, which are based on an electrochemical reaction and charge accumulation extends into the depth of the electrode, it is possible to achieve higher discharge times while maintaining a fast charge rate. The efforts of developers of supercapacitors are aimed at creating hybrid devices with batteries that combine the advantages of supercapacitors, primarily a high charge rate, and the advantages of batteries - high energy intensity and long time discharge. Imagine in the near future a ionistor battery that will charge in a couple of minutes and power a laptop or smartphone for a day or more!

Despite the fact that now the energy density of supercapacitors is still several times less than the energy density of batteries, they are used in consumer electronics and for engines of various vehicles, including the most.

* * *

Thus, today there are a large number of electrochemical devices, each of which is promising for its specific applications. To improve the efficiency of these devices, scientists need to solve a number of problems, both fundamental and technological. Most of these tasks within the framework of one of the breakthrough projects are being dealt with at the Ural Federal University, so we asked Maxim Ananiev, Director of the Institute of High-Temperature Electrochemistry of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor of the Department of Electrochemical Production Technology of the Institute of Chemical Technology of the Ural Federal University, to talk about the immediate plans and prospects for the development of modern fuel cells. .

N+1: Is there an alternative to the most popular Li-Ion batteries in the near future?

Maxim Ananiev: Modern efforts of battery developers are aimed at replacing the type of charge carrier in the electrolyte from lithium to sodium, potassium, and aluminum. As a result of replacing lithium, it will be possible to reduce the cost of the battery, although the weight and size characteristics will proportionally increase. In other words, for the same electrical characteristics, a sodium-ion battery will be larger and heavier than a lithium-ion battery.

In addition, one of the promising developing areas for improving batteries is the creation of hybrid chemical energy sources based on the combination of metal-ion batteries with an air electrode, as in fuel cells. In general, the direction of creating hybrid systems, as has already been shown on the example of supercapacitors, apparently, in the near future will make it possible to see chemical energy sources with high consumer characteristics on the market.

Ural federal university together with academic and industrial partners from Russia and the world, today it is implementing six megaprojects that are focused on breakthrough areas scientific research. One of such projects is "Perspective Technologies of Electrochemical Energy from Chemical Design of New Materials to New Generation Electrochemical Devices for Energy Conservation and Conversion".

A group of scientists from the Strategic Academic Unit (SAU) UrFU School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, which includes Maxim Ananiev, is engaged in the design and development of new materials and technologies, including fuel cells, electrolytic cells, metal graphene batteries, electrochemical power storage systems and supercapacitors.

Research and scientific work are conducted in constant cooperation with the Institute of High-Temperature Electrochemistry, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and with the support of partners.

Which fuel cells are currently being developed and have the greatest potential?

One of the most promising types of fuel cells are proton-ceramic cells. They have advantages over polymer fuel cells with a proton exchange membrane and solid oxide cells, as they can operate with a direct supply of hydrocarbon fuel. This significantly simplifies the design of a power plant based on proton-ceramic fuel cells and the control system, and therefore increases the reliability of operation. True, this type of fuel cells is historically less developed at the moment, but modern scientific research allows us to hope for a high potential of this technology in the future.

What problems related to fuel cells are being dealt with at the Ural Federal University now?

Now UrFU scientists, together with the Institute of High-Temperature Electrochemistry (IHTE) of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, are working on the creation of highly efficient electrochemical devices and autonomous power generators for applications in distributed energy. The creation of power plants for distributed energy initially implies the development of hybrid systems based on an electric power generator and a storage device, which are batteries. At the same time, the fuel cell operates constantly, providing load during peak hours, and in idle mode it charges the battery, which itself can act as a reserve both in case of high power consumption and in case of emergency situations.

Chemists from Ural Federal University and IHTE achieved the greatest success in the development of solid-oxide and proton-ceramic fuel cells. Since 2016, in the Urals, together with the State Corporation Rosatom, the first Russian production of power plants based on solid oxide fuel cells has been created. The development of the Ural scientists has already passed "field" tests at the gas pipeline cathodic protection station at the experimental site of Uraltransgaz LLC. The power plant with a rated power of 1.5 kilowatts has worked for more than 10 thousand hours and has shown a high potential for the use of such devices.

Within the framework of the joint laboratory of Ural Federal University and IHTE, electrochemical devices based on a proton-conducting ceramic membrane are being developed. This will make it possible in the near future to reduce the operating temperatures for solid oxide fuel cells from 900 to 500 degrees Celsius and to abandon the preliminary reforming of hydrocarbon fuel, thus creating cost-effective electrochemical generators capable of operating in the conditions of a developed gas supply infrastructure in Russia.

Alexander Dubov

Sometime in the future, at the beginning of this century, it may be said that rising oil prices and environmental concerns led to a sharp expansion of the horizons of automakers and forced them to develop and implement more and more new types of fuel and engines.

One of these fuels will be called hydrogen. As you know, when hydrogen and oxygen are combined, water is obtained, which means that if we put this process at the heart of a car engine, then the exhaust will not be a mixture of hazardous gases and chemical elements, but ordinary water.

Despite some technical difficulties associated with the use of hydrogen fuel cells (FC), automakers are not going to give up and are already developing their new models with hydrogen as fuel. At the Frankfurt Motor Show 2011 could be seen as one of the flagships of the auto industry, Daimler AG presented to the public several Mercedes-Benz prototypes with hydrogen engine. In the same year, the Korean Hyndai announced that it would abandon the development of electric vehicles and concentrate on the development of cars that will use hydrogen fuel cells.

Despite this active development, not many people have an exact idea of ​​what exactly these hydrogen fuel cells are and what they have inside.

In order to clarify the situation, let's turn to the history of hydrogen fuel cells.

The first to theoretically describe the possibility of creating a hydrogen fuel cell was the German Christian Friedrich Schönbein. In 1838 he described the principle in one of the scientific journals of the day.

A year later. In 1939, Wales judge Sir William Robert Grove created and demonstrated a practical hydrogen battery. But the charge produced by the battery was not enough for the invention to be widely used.

The term "fuel cell" was first used in 1889 by researchers Ludwig Mond and Charles Langer, who attempted to create a working fuel cell using air and coke oven gas. According to another version, the first to use the term "fuel cell" was William White Jaques. He was also the first to use phosphoric acid in an electrolyte bath.

In the 1920s, research in Germany paved the way for the use of the carbonate cycle and the solid oxide fuel cells that are in use today.

In 1932, engineer Francis T Bacon began his research on hydrogen fuel cells. Before him, researchers used porous platinum electrodes and sulfuric acid in an electrolyte bath. Platinum made it very expensive to manufacture, and sulfuric acid created additional difficulties due to its causticity. Bacon replaced expensive platinum with nickel and sulfuric acid with a less corrosive alkaline electrolyte.

Bacon constantly improved his design and in 1959 was able to present to the public a 5-kilowatt fuel cell that was capable of supplying energy welding machine. The researcher named his FC Bacon Cell.

In October of the same 1959, Harry Karl Ihrig demonstrated a 20 horsepower tractor, which became the first in the world vehicle powered by a fuel cell.

In the 1960s, the American General Electric used the Bacon fuel cell principle and developed a power generation system for NASA's Gemini and Apollo space programs. NASA figured out what to use nuclear reactor would be too expensive, and conventional batteries or solar panels required too much space. In addition, hydrogen fuel cells could simultaneously supply the ship with electricity and the crew with water.

The first hydrogen fuel bus was built in 1993. In 1997, automakers Daimler Benz and Toyota presented their prototypes. cars.

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Comments:

And they forgot to say about the work on the topic of fuel cell in the USSR, right?

when electricity is received, water will be formed. and the more of the first, the more of her. And now imagine how quickly the droplets will score everything fuel cells and gas passage channels - H2, O2 And how will this generator work at sub-zero temperatures?

you propose to burn tens of tons of coal, throwing tons of soot into the atmosphere to get hydrogen in order to get a couple of amperes of current for a newfangled adze?!
where is the economy with the environment here ?!

Here it is - the bone of thinking!
Why burn tons of coal? We live in the 21st century and there are already technologies that allow us to get energy without burning anything at all. It remains only to competently accumulate this energy for convenient further use.

fuel cell- what it is? When and how did he appear? Why is it needed and why are they so often talked about in our time? What are its scope, characteristics and properties? Unstoppable progress requires answers to all these questions!

What is a fuel cell?

fuel cell- this is a chemical current source or an electrochemical generator, this is a device for converting chemical energy into electrical energy. In modern life, chemical current sources are used everywhere and are batteries for mobile phones, laptops, PDAs, as well as batteries in cars, uninterruptible power supplies, etc. The next stage in the development of this area will be the widespread distribution of fuel cells, and this is an undeniable fact.

History of fuel cells

The history of fuel cells is another story of how the properties of matter, once discovered on Earth, were widely used far in space, and at the turn of the millennium they returned from heaven to Earth.

It all started in 1839 when the German chemist Christian Schönbein published the principles of the fuel cell in the Philosophical Journal. In the same year, an Englishman, an Oxford graduate, William Robert Grove, designed a galvanic cell, later called the Grove galvanic cell, which is also recognized as the first fuel cell. The very name "fuel cell" was given to the invention in the year of its anniversary - in 1889. Ludwig Mond and Karl Langer are the authors of the term.

A little earlier, in 1874, Jules Verne, in The Mysterious Island, predicted the current energy situation, writing that "Water will one day be used as a fuel, hydrogen and oxygen, of which it is composed, will be used."

Meanwhile, new technology power supply was gradually improved, and starting from the 50s of the XX century, not a year passed without announcements of the latest inventions in this area. In 1958, the first tractor powered by fuel cells appeared in the United States, in 1959. 5KW power supply for welding machine was released, etc. In the 70s, hydrogen technology took off into space: airplanes appeared and rocket engines on hydrogen. In the 1960s, RSC Energia developed fuel elements for the Soviet lunar program. The Buran program also did not do without them: alkaline 10 kW fuel cells were developed. And towards the end of the century, fuel cells crossed zero altitude above sea level - based on them, developed electricity supply German submarine. Returning to Earth, in 2009 the first locomotive was put into operation in the USA. Naturally, on fuel cells.

In all the beautiful history of fuel cells, what is interesting is that the wheel is still the unparalleled invention of mankind in nature. The thing is that fuel cells are similar in their structure and principle of operation to a biological cell, which, in fact, is a miniature hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell. As a result, man once again invented what nature has been using for millions of years.

The principle of operation of fuel cells

The principle of operation of fuel cells is obvious even from the school curriculum in chemistry, and it was he who was laid down in the experiments of William Grove in 1839. The thing is that the process of water electrolysis (water dissociation) is reversible. Just as it is true that when an electric current is passed through water, the latter is split into hydrogen and oxygen, so the reverse is also true: hydrogen and oxygen can be combined to produce water and electricity. In Grove's experiment, two electrodes were placed in a chamber into which limited portions of pure hydrogen and oxygen were supplied under pressure. Due to the small volumes of gas, as well as due to the chemical properties of the carbon electrodes, a slow reaction took place in the chamber with the release of heat, water and, most importantly, with the formation of a potential difference between the electrodes.

The simplest fuel cell consists of a special membrane used as an electrolyte, on both sides of which powdered electrodes are deposited. Hydrogen enters one side (anode) and oxygen (air) enters the other (cathode). Each electrode has a different chemical reaction. At the anode, hydrogen breaks down into a mixture of protons and electrons. In some fuel cells, the electrodes are surrounded by a catalyst, usually made of platinum or other noble metals, to aid in the dissociation reaction:

2H 2 → 4H + + 4e -

where H 2 is a diatomic hydrogen molecule (the form in which hydrogen is present as a gas); H + - ionized hydrogen (proton); e - - electron.

On the cathode side of the fuel cell, protons (passed through the electrolyte) and electrons (which passed through the external load) recombine and react with the oxygen supplied to the cathode to form water:

4H + + 4e - + O 2 → 2H 2 O

Overall reaction in the fuel cell is written as follows:

2H 2 + O 2 → 2H 2 O

The operation of a fuel cell is based on the fact that the electrolyte passes protons through itself (toward the cathode), but electrons do not. The electrons move towards the cathode along the outer conducting circuit. This movement of electrons is the electrical current that can be used to power an external device connected to the fuel cell (a load such as a light bulb):

In their work, fuel cells use hydrogen fuel and oxygen. The easiest way is with oxygen - it is taken from the air. Hydrogen can be supplied directly from a certain container or by separating it from an external source of fuel (natural gas, gasoline or methyl alcohol - methanol). In the case of an external source, it must be chemically converted to extract the hydrogen. Currently, most of the fuel cell technologies being developed for portable devices use methanol.

Fuel Cell Characteristics

Fuel cells are analogous to existing batteries in the sense that in both cases Electric Energy obtained from the chemical But there are also fundamental differences:

• they only operate as long as the fuel and oxidizer are supplied from an external source (i.e. they cannot store electrical energy),

  the chemical composition of the electrolyte does not change during operation (the fuel cell does not need to be recharged),

  they are completely independent of electricity (while conventional batteries store energy from the mains).

Each fuel cell creates voltage in 1V. More voltage is achieved by connecting them in series. The increase in power (current) is realized through a parallel connection of cascades of series-connected fuel cells.

For fuel cells no hard limit on efficiency, as in heat engines (the efficiency of the Carnot cycle is the maximum possible efficiency among all heat engines with the same minimum and maximum temperatures).

High efficiency achieved through the direct conversion of fuel energy into electricity. If in diesel generator sets the fuel is first burned, the resulting steam or gas rotates the turbine or shaft of the internal combustion engine, which in turn rotates the electric generator. The result is an efficiency of a maximum of 42%, more often it is about 35-38%. Moreover, due to the many links, as well as due to thermodynamic limitations on the maximum efficiency of heat engines, the existing efficiency is unlikely to be raised higher. For existing fuel cells Efficiency is 60-80%,

Efficiency almost does not depend on the load factor,

The capacity is several times higher than existing batteries

Complete no environmentally harmful emissions. Only clean water vapor and thermal energy are released (unlike diesel generators, which have polluting environment exhaust and requiring their removal).

Types of fuel cells

fuel cells classified on the following grounds:

by fuel used

working pressure and temperature,

according to the nature of the application.

In general, there are the following fuel cell types:

Solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFC);

Fuel cell with proton exchange membrane (Proton-exchange membrane fuel cell - PEMFC);

Reversible Fuel Cell (RFC);

Direct methanol fuel cell (Direct-methanol fuel cell - DMFC);

Melt carbonate fuel cell (Molten-carbonate fuel cells - MCFC);

Phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFC);

Alkaline fuel cells (AFC).

One of the types of fuel cells operating at normal temperatures and pressures using hydrogen and oxygen, are elements with an ion exchange membrane. The resulting water does not dissolve the solid electrolyte, flows down and is easily removed.

Fuel Cell Problems

The main problem of fuel cells is related to the need for "packaged" hydrogen, which could be freely purchased. Obviously, the problem should be solved over time, but so far the situation causes a slight smile: what comes first - the chicken or the egg? Fuel cells are not yet advanced enough to build hydrogen plants, but their progress is unthinkable without these plants. Here we also note the problem of the source of hydrogen. On the this moment hydrogen is produced from natural gas, but rising energy costs will also increase the price of hydrogen. At the same time, the presence of CO and H 2 S (hydrogen sulfide) is inevitable in hydrogen from natural gas, which poison the catalyst.

Common platinum catalysts use a very expensive and irreplaceable metal in nature - platinum. However, this problem is planned to be solved by using catalysts based on enzymes, which are a cheap and easily produced substance.

Heat is also a problem. Efficiency will increase dramatically if the generated heat is directed to a useful channel - to produce thermal energy for heating system, use as waste heat in absorption refrigerating machines etc.

Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC): Real Application

Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC) are of the highest practical interest today. A Portege M100 laptop running on a DMFC fuel cell looks like this:

A typical DMFC circuit contains, in addition to the anode, cathode and membrane, several additional components: a fuel cartridge, a methanol sensor, a fuel circulation pump, an air pump, a heat exchanger, etc.

The operating time, for example, of a laptop compared to batteries is planned to be increased by 4 times (up to 20 hours), a mobile phone - up to 100 hours in active mode and up to six months in standby mode. Recharging will be done by adding a portion of liquid methanol.

The main task is to find options for using the methanol solution with its highest concentration. The problem is that methanol is a fairly strong poison, lethal in doses of several tens of grams. But the concentration of methanol directly affects the duration of work. If earlier a 3-10% methanol solution was used, then mobile phones and PDAs using a 50% solution have already appeared, and in 2008, in laboratory conditions, MTI MicroFuel Cells and, a little later, Toshiba, obtained fuel cells operating on pure methanol.

Fuel cells are the future!

Finally, the fact that the international organization IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), which defines industrial standards for electronic devices, has already announced the creation of a working group to develop an international standard for miniature fuel cells, speaks of the obvious great future of fuel cells.

From the point of view of "green" energy, hydrogen fuel cells are extremely high efficiency- 60%. For comparison: efficiency of the best internal combustion engines is 35-40%. For solar power plants, the coefficient is only 15-20%, but it is highly dependent on weather conditions. Efficiency of the best vane wind farms up to 40%, which is comparable to steam generators, but windmills also require suitable weather conditions and expensive service.

As we can see, according to this parameter, hydrogen energy is the most attractive source of energy, but there are still a number of problems that prevent its mass application. The most important of them is the process of hydrogen production.

Mining problems

Hydrogen energy is environmentally friendly, but not autonomous. To work, a fuel cell needs hydrogen, which is not found on Earth in its pure form. Hydrogen needs to be obtained, but all currently existing methods are either very expensive or ineffective.

The most efficient method in terms of the amount of hydrogen produced per unit of energy expended is the steam reforming of natural gas. Methane is combined with water vapor at a pressure of 2 MPa (about 19 atmospheres, i.e. pressure at a depth of about 190 m) and a temperature of about 800 degrees, resulting in a converted gas with a hydrogen content of 55-75%. Steam reforming requires huge plants that can only be used in production.

The tube furnace for steam reforming of methane is not the most ergonomic way to produce hydrogen. Source: CTK-Euro

A more convenient and simple method is water electrolysis. When an electric current passes through the treated water, a series of electrochemical reactions occur, resulting in the formation of hydrogen. A significant disadvantage of this method is the high energy consumption required for the reaction. That is, it turns out a somewhat strange situation: to obtain hydrogen energy, you need ... energy. In order to avoid unnecessary costs in electrolysis and save valuable resources, some companies are looking to develop systems full cycle"electricity - hydrogen - electricity", in which energy generation becomes possible without external recharge. An example of such a system is the development of Toshiba H2One.

Toshiba H2One mobile power station

We have developed the H2One mobile mini power plant that converts water into hydrogen and hydrogen into energy. It uses solar panels to maintain electrolysis, while excess energy is stored in batteries and ensures the operation of the system in the absence of sunlight. The resulting hydrogen is either fed directly to the fuel cells or stored in an integrated tank. H2One electrolyzer generates up to 2 m 3 of hydrogen per hour, and at the output it provides power up to 55 kW. For the production of 1 m 3 of hydrogen, the station requires up to 2.5 m 3 of water.

So far, the H2One station is not capable of providing electricity to a large enterprise or an entire city, but its energy will be quite enough for the functioning of small areas or organizations. Thanks to its mobility, it can also be used as a temporary solution in natural Disasters or an emergency power outage. In addition, unlike a diesel generator, which needs fuel to function normally, a hydrogen power plant needs only water.

The Toshiba H2One is now used only in a few cities in Japan, for example, it supplies electricity and hot water railway station in Kawasaki city.

Installation of the H2One system in Kawasaki

Hydrogen future

Now hydrogen fuel cells provide energy for portable power banks, city buses with cars, and rail transport. (We will cover more about the use of hydrogen in the automotive industry in our next post). Hydrogen fuel cells unexpectedly turned out to be an excellent solution for quadcopters - with the same mass as the battery, the hydrogen supply provides up to five times longer flight time. In this case, frost does not affect efficiency in any way. Experimental drones fuel cell production Russian company AT Energy was used for filming at the Sochi Olympics.

It became known that at the upcoming Olympic Games in Tokyo, hydrogen will be used in cars, in the production of electricity and heat, and will also become the main source of energy for the Olympic village. To do this, by order of Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corp. In the Japanese city of Namie, one of the world's largest hydrogen production stations is being built. The station will consume up to 10 MW of energy obtained from "green" sources, generating up to 900 tons of hydrogen per year by electrolysis.

Hydrogen energy is our “reserve for the future”, when fossil fuels will have to be completely abandoned, and renewable energy sources will not be able to cover the needs of mankind. According to the Markets&Markets forecast, the global production of hydrogen, which currently stands at $115 billion, will grow to $154 billion by 2022. But in the near future mass introduction technology is unlikely to happen, it is still necessary to solve a number of problems associated with the production and operation of special power plants, to reduce their cost. When technological barriers are overcome, hydrogen energy will new level and perhaps be as widespread as conventional or hydropower today.

Entrepreneur Danila Shaposhnikov says he undertook to bring the product to market from the laboratory. Startup AT Energy is making hydrogen fuel cells that will allow drones to fly many times longer than they do now.

Entrepreneur Danila Shaposhnikov helps scientists Yuri Dobrovolsky and Sergey Nefedkin commercialize their invention - compact hydrogen fuel cells that can operate for several hours without fear of frost and moisture. The AT Energy company created by them has already attracted about 100 million rubles. investment and is preparing to conquer the global market for unmanned aircraft$ 7 billion, which so far mainly uses lithium-ion batteries.

From laboratory to market

The business was started by Shaposhnikov's acquaintance with two doctors of science in the field of energy and electrochemistry - Dobrovolsky from the Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka and Nefedkin, who heads the Center for Hydrogen Energy at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. The professors had an idea how to make low-temperature fuel cells, but they did not understand how to bring their invention to the market. “I acted as an entrepreneur-investor who took the risk of bringing the product to the market from the laboratory,” recalls Shaposhnikov in an interview with RBC.

In August 2012, Shaposhnikov, Dobrovolsky and Nefedkin registered AT Energy (AT Energy LLC) and began to prepare prototypes. The company applied and became a Skolkovo resident. Throughout 2013, at the institute's rented base in Chernogolovka, the founders of AT Energy worked to radically increase the life of fuel cell batteries. “Chernogolovka is a science city, it is quite easy to find and involve laboratory assistants, engineers and electrochemists there,” says Shaposhnikov. Then AT Energy moved to the Chernogolovsky industrial park. There, the first product appeared - a fuel cell for drones.

The “heart” of the fuel cell developed by AT Energy is a membrane-electrode unit in which an electrochemical reaction takes place: on the one hand, air with oxygen is supplied, on the other hand, compressed gaseous hydrogen, as a result of a chemical reaction of hydrogen oxidation, energy is generated.

For a real product, AT Energy was able to receive two grants from Skolkovo (a total of almost 47 million rubles), as well as attract about $1 million in investments. The North Energy Ventures fund believed in the project (received 13.8% of AT Energy, its partner is Shaposhnikov himself), the Phystech Ventures venture fund (13.8%), founded by graduates of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and the Morton developer (10% ); directly Shaposhnikov and Dobrovolsky now own 26.7% of AT Energy, and Nefedkin - 9% (all - according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities).

AT Energy in numbers

About 1 00 million rubles— the total amount of attracted investments

3-30 kg- the mass of drones for which AT Energy makes power systems

$7 billion per year - the volume of the global drone market in 2015

$90 million— the volume of the Russian market of military drones in 2014

$5 million— the volume of the Russian civil market of drones in 2014

$2.6 billion— volume of the world fuel cell market in 2014

Source: Company data, Business Insider, Markets & Markets

Flying longer, even longer

Today, almost 80% of drones in the world use electric motors that are powered by lithium-ion or lithium-polymer batteries. "The most a big problem with batteries - in that it has power consumption limitations in size. If you want twice as much energy, put another battery, and another one, and so on. And in drones the most important parameter- this is his mass, ”explains Shaposhnikov.

The mass of the drone determines its payload - the number of devices that can be hung on it (for example, cameras, thermal imagers, scanning devices, etc.), as well as the flight time. To date, drones fly mostly from half an hour to an hour and a half. “It’s not interesting for half an hour,” says Shaposhnikov. “It turns out that as soon as you lifted it into the air, it’s already time to change the battery.” In addition, lithium-ion batteries behave capriciously at low temperatures. Shaposhnikov claims that the fuel cells developed at AT Energy allow drones to fly up to five times longer: from two and a half to four hours, and they are not afraid of frost (up to minus 20 degrees).

AT Energy purchases consumables and components for its batteries both in Russia and abroad. “For scientific developments, small series are implied, so we cannot yet give potential Russian manufacturers the planning horizon of the components we need so that they can localize their production,” explains Shaposhnikov.

In 2014, AT Energy completed the first contracts: it supplied 20 battery systems based on its own fuel cells to the military (Shaposhnikov does not name the customer). They were also equipped with the drones of the AFM-Servers company, which used them when filming the Sochi Olympics. “One of the goals of the company was to test our systems on drones, and we didn’t care if we were paid for it or not,” recalls Shaposhnikov. To date, AT Energy has signed a number of contracts and pre-contracts, the potential revenue for which, according to Shaposhnikov, is 100 million rubles. (mainly with government agencies).

Shaposhnikov does not disclose the financial results of AT Energy. According to Kontur.Fokus, in 2014 the company had a revenue of 12.4 million rubles. and a net loss of 1.2 million rubles. The cost of fuel cells with a capacity of up to 0.5 kW produced by AT Energy, according to Shaposhnikov, fluctuates in the range of $10-25 thousand, depending on the type of drone, its tasks, flight duration and other parameters.

The devaluation of the ruble, according to Shaposhnikov, will make it easier for the company to enter the world market. “We set ourselves the goal in 2016 to establish relationships with Western players, and in 2017 to make the first products for the main types of foreign drones,” he says.

INVESTOR

"AT Energy succeeded in creating a fuel cell with unique characteristics"

Oleg Pertsovsky, Operations Director of the Energy Efficient Technologies Cluster of the Skolkovo Foundation

“They were able to make a device that works at negative temperatures, while being quite compact and inexpensive. For knowledge-intensive projects, four years is a short period of time, so they are moving at a normal pace, in our opinion. Drones are one of the obvious and most promising applications for fuel cells. By replacing the power source, the drone will be able to increase the flight time several times with the same mass-dimensional characteristics. There is also a market for autonomous power supply, for example, for cellular networks, where there is a great need for low-power power sources in remote areas where there are no electric networks.”

“Creating a competitive product and entering this market have significant investment risks”

Sergey Filimonov, Head of GS Venture Corporate Venture Fund (part of GS Group)

“The market for high-capacity fuel cells is much broader and more complex than the UAV space. But fuel cells will have to compete with a number of existing energy sources, both in terms of efficiency and cost. Creating a competitive product and entering this market have significant investment risks. For GS Venture, the areas of UAVs and fuel cells are quite interesting, but the fund is not ready to invest in a startup just because this company operates in an emerging field and targets a rapidly growing market.

CLIENTS

"This is best technology on the market, but too expensive

Oleg Panfilenok, founder and CEO Copter Express

“AT Energy has a very strong technology. The “fuel cell plus hydrogen tank” combination allows for a confident energy capacity, significantly higher than in lithium-polymer or lithium-ion batteries. We have already designed a mapping drone, about 1 meter in diameter, to fly around large area, - if you put hydrogen fuel cells on it, it will fly up to four hours. It would be convenient and efficient, you would not have to plant the device several times for recharging.

At the moment it is definitely the best technology on the market, but there is one problem: it is too expensive for us. One battery from AT Energy can cost about 500 thousand rubles. - an order of magnitude higher than a lithium-polymer battery. Yes, it is one and a half times cheaper than foreign analogues, but we need ten. We are not the military, who have budgets, we are a commercial company and are not ready to pay big money. For the military, the characteristics of a drone are more important than its cost, but for commerce, on the contrary, it’s better to let it be worse, but cheaper.”

“Drone flight time for many tasks is the most important factor”

Maxim Shinkevich, CEO of the Unmanned Systems group of companies

“We are very familiar with AT Energy and have signed a cooperation agreement with them. We recently finished developing a new oversized multicopter with a payload of up to 2kg, which will be equipped with fuel cells from AT Energy and will fly from 2.5 to 4 hours. On lithium batteries, such a drone would fly for only 30 minutes. This drone can be used for both civilian and military purposes - it is a video surveillance system for search and rescue of people, we are already ready to launch it in a series. We already have the first civilian customer for it, as soon as we show it in action, other contracts will appear.

One of the main problems in the mass use of fuel cells is the lack of a network of stations for their charging. They are more expensive than batteries (as a result, the cost of the drone with them increases by 15%), but in return you get more than twice the flight duration. Drone flight time for many tasks is the most important factor.”

Natalia Suvorova