Energy crisis is a constant discussion theme. However several people fail to see that a reliable non pollutant alternative energy source is already available and economically viable. I am referring to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology, a clean energy source that the only thing it produces is nothing more than water. But if such a clean energy source is available and is not being used, several questions must be asked, such as:

To answer the first question by the definition from Wikipedia, “A fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion”, what this means is that inside the fuel cell (FC) occurs a catalytic reaction which separates the component electrons and protons of the reactant fuel (Hydrogen). Only the protons are allowed through the polymer electrolyte membrane and the electrons flow through a circuit which generates an electrical current. Afterwards the electrons are combined with the positively charged hydrogen and oxygen from atmosphere to create water. By this definition we realize that the FC creates its own electricity and as long as the reactant is supplied to maintain the necessary reaction it can operate continuously, unlike batteries which need to be replenished.

The most obvious advantage of the hydrogen fuel cell is that it generates only water, being great for the environment consequently being great for our health. Other less obvious advantages are that this source of energy is more compact in size, lightweight and reliable than the usual combustion engines, as it doesn’t have any major moving parts, providing a reliability of 99.9999%. Converting this percentage to common language, it means that over a period of six years time we would have less than one minute of down time. And if practical efficiency which is similar to diesel combustion engine would go up to the theoretical one, the hydrogen proton exchange membrane fuel cell would double its efficiency.


So why do we not use this technology? In some countries public transportation such as “normal buses” are being replaced by buses with a fuel cell as a power, and many car companies are developing their own prototypes but to make this application commercially viable to the us, significant research would be required to reduce the cost of the production of the FC and increase the efficiency. We must also find effective and efficient ways to produce and store hydrogen. We would need to set up an infrastructure for hydrogen economy, there would have to be several hydrogen stations where we could replenish the fuel cells and stations where the water could be converted into hydrogen. However, all of this has a great cost, and nations are scared of investing on a project of this magnitude where the technology isn’t at a mature state.

Nevertheless, if these actions were to be taken, we could replace all our combustion engines for fuel cells: motorbikes, cars, boats, airplanes, all our machinery would be power supplied by the fuel cell technology.