Fuel cell, a Substitute of Fuel

Taqi aufa, 1406572436, Teknik Kimia

Do you know what is the most used, and legal drugs for human civilization? A drug that
gives temporary happiness while silently accumulating danger that could strike back at any time?
The drug that has undermined the modern civilization is actually black oil or black gold. We are
now lucky to live in the time when we could enjoy the drug calmly and not being threaten. But
imagine when the oil is nearly depleted or already depleted at all. 54.4% power supply is comes
from fuel power generator. Losing the oil could means we are losing modern civilization since it
greatly relies on energy. Even, we havent talk about the 87.7% greenhouse gasses pollution
emitted from this power source. The need to find for a substitute of fuel is really urgent.
Recently, Battery has been proposed to substitute the fuel but it weigh more and need longer time
to charge. Today, engineers are making innovation by making a breed of fuel and battery cell
which is called fuel cell. Fuel cell, hold a great hope to substitute the fuel because it is way more
cleaner, cheaper, efficient and abundant.
Fuel cell is actually works almost like battery but using the water regeneration reaction to
produce power instead of corroding the anode like most batteries do. The chemical reaction is
really simple, almost like the basic chemistry experiment except we are using hydrogen and
oxygen gas to make water and electricity, instead of using electricity to dissolve water into
hydrogen and oxygen gas. If you observe, you would find no CO2 emission in the equation
which mean no greenhouse gasses that we face now. It only emit pure water as exhaust which is
a more environmentally friendly compound. The exhaust is also colorless with no carbon or
smoke as a side emission which mean we could enjoy our long lost clear night sky. We finally
could achieve back what we have lost for long time.
Another advantage of fuel cell is, it uses hydrogen to fuel the battery while taking the
oxygen from the atmosphere like breathing. Since 93.5% element that made up universe is
hydrogen and 21% of atmosphere gas is oxygen, the supply fuel for this battery is unlimited and
The energy could be made as cheap as possible. It could lead to a new technology era where cost
and pollution is no longer a barrier. Development of energy rich technology is now possible and
could increase the human life standard. The new future of human civilization is held by this
brilliant technology.
Fuel cell could achieve 40%-60% energy efficiency which the most efficient energy
conversion human ever known. In contrast, fuel generator only achieve 10% efficiency while gas
turbines could achieve 30%. The reason for this efficiency is that fuel cell could directly convert
chemical energy into electrical energy. Fuel generator however, need the chemical energy to be
converted into mechanical energy before converted into the electrical energy. This longer process
create energy loss by friction, heat, sound and light. at the other side, the shorter energy
conversion makes the fuel cell emit no sound. You could imagine a new F1 car that emits almost
no sound upon speeding up. The BBC Top Gear Automotive program has proven that a silent
fuel cell powered sport car could beat its gasoline twin.
 Fuel cell has both advantages of fuel generator and battery cell which makes it the most
promising energy alternative. However, fuel cell today is still remained as prototype and need to
be enhanced at various aspect. But, the fuel cell technology is already close to our civilization
and could possibly open a new way of human civilization.