New CFCI Results in the News!
CFCI researchers have successfully built a mesoporous metal material.
This is the first example of this long-sought acheivement.
Click here for more details on the NEWS page.
Fuel Cell Symposium '08 Completed!
The Second Annual Fuel Cell Symposium at Cornell built on the success of the first. Great talks, posters, and networking.
Information from FCS 08 will be posted shortly.
Click here for Symposium Documents.
For Industries...
The CFCI brochure gives an overview of the Institute, and how we help fuel cell companies.
Click here for the PDF.
For more information about working with CFCI, check out our Industrial Collaboration Program via the CCMR Industrial Programs Office.
For more on how CFCI works with companies, check out the Consortium page.
Contact CFCI.
CFCI Internal Site
Developing Materials for Tomorrow's PEM Fuel Cells
As described below, fuel cells are devices that enable highly efficient generation of electricity from a chemical fuel. There are many different types of fuel cell, and several of these are already being succesfully commercialized as stationary electric generators, for example. The Cornell Fuel Cell Institute has aimed our research at developing advanced materials for a particular kind of fuel cell: lower-temperature, polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Many automobile manufacturers, together with the US Department of Energy, are focusing on PEM fuel cells for the cars of the future. When we hear about cars driving on hydrogen, we are hearing about fuel cell cars — and probably PEM based fuel cell cars.
CFCI Research
Engineering advancements of PEM fuel cells have advanced to a point where the barriers to further improvements in efficiency now lie in the materials used in the fuel cell components: the anode, the cathode, the membrane and interfaces and, where applicable, the reformer. At CFCI, our multidisciplinary approach to develop new materials takes advantage of a high-throughput exploration strategy that allows a large number of samples, e.g., with varying composition, to be synthesized simultaneously and evaluated using rapid automated probes. In addition, CFCI researchers uses a combination of theory and experiment to study fundamental questions of catalytic oxidation at specific intermetallic surfaces and identification / design of high energy density fuels. ...
What is a Fuel Cell?
All fuel cells directly convert the energy released in certain chemical reactions to electricity. Because of this direct extraction of electrons, fuel cells are the only energy conversion device that enable us to generate electricty from a chemical fuel at efficiencies appraoching 100%. Today's fuel cells are already operating near 60% efficiency, or better. In lower temperature PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) fuel cells, (schematic shown above) these reactions are primarily combustion (oxidation) of hydrogen or a carbonaceous fuel, to electrical energy.
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