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Fuel Cell Cars Tech
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For the layman, the term fuel cell does not do a very good job of describing the device used in fuel cell cars. Let’s begin with this premise: most vehicles are powered using either an internal combustion engine or a battery. A fuel cell is not an engine, and it is not a battery. But it powers a vehicle because it is a little like each of them.

A battery stores chemical energy until the energy is needed; it then converts the chemical energy into electrical energy. A gas engine doesn’t store energy. Instead, an external tank provides the proper fuel necessary to create usable energy.

Fuel cell cars need fuel provided by an external tank, like a gas engine, but it converts chemical energy into electrical energy like a battery

How do fuel cells work?

Fuel cell cars work thanks to a process called electrolysis.

Electrolysis involves using an electric current to separate elements. For example, fuel for the NASA Space Shuttle is created in essence by running a current through water, which is composed of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule (H2O). Electrolysis separates the hydrogen from the oxygen, and that hydrogen is burned to fuel the Shuttle.

A fuel cell uses this exact same process, except in reverse: instead of using water (H2O) and energy (the electric current) to create hydrogen ((H2) and oxygen (O) in separate forms, a fuel cell combines that hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O) to create energy and water (H2O). The energy ‘created’ is what gives the car power. All things being equal, this is why the only tailpipe emission from a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is water—since nothing else is put into this equation, the only thing that could come out is water.

So fuel cell cars converts an electrochemical reaction into electrical energy. Understood this way, a fuel cell seems to resemble a common battery, and to this extent they are similar. But a battery already has an energy content; it stores energy

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