| Acta’s hydrazine powered fuel cell "goes like a rocket" |
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Recent announcements in the automotive fuel cell industry have highlighted the potential for hydrazine as a future fuel for cars. Scientists at Acta have demonstrated a fuel cell performance 40% better than that shown in the latest published literature. The performance achieved would be sufficient to replace hydrogen fuelled fuel cell systems in existing cars and buses and confirms the superlative performance of Acta catalysts with a wide range of fuels. Read More
Hydrazine (N2H4) makes an excellent fuel for fuel cells: it is carbon free, thereby eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, has high energy density and is easily manufactured from renewable sources. It has not been practical to use in consumer applications due to its toxicity and its instability - it has been used in the past as a rocket fuel. However, Japanese scientists at a major car maker are now developing a storage technology which renders the hydrazine safer than gasoline inside the fuel tank and which is only reconverted back into pure hydrazine immediately prior to consumption in the fuel cell.
Acta's fuel cell delivered a peak power of 700mW/cm2 using HYPERMEC catalysts in the same operating conditions as the 500mW/cm2 reported as the highest previously published performance.
In order to power a car, a conventional hydrogen fuel cell contains up to $2,500 of platinum in the catalyst. The fuel cell also requires hydrogen gas in order to operate. Therefore, although hydrogen fuel cell cars are now almost market ready, the lack of an infrastructure to supply hydrogen to fuel them presents an almost insurmountable problem.
The new hydrazine fuel cell contains no expensive platinum in the catalysts, and would therefore remove the single most expensive component of the current hydrogen fuel cell.
Hydrazine is yet another option for practical hydrogen supply to add to the breakthrough products for hydrogen generation from ethanol, glycerol, water and ammonia which Acta has on trial with customers world-wide.
Anyone who would like to know more about Acta's catalysts with hydrazine or for hydrogen generation should contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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