Diesel fuel cell developed

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania claim to have developed a prototype fuel cell that is powered by diesel. The breakthrough would solve the problem of reforming a commonly available hydrocarbon fuel into hydrogen in order to run fuel cells. The prototype fuel cell runs directly on hydrocarbons. It does not require complicated reforming into hydrogen either within the device itself or at the point of fuel delivery. The prototype is less than 20mm across and operates in a furnace set at 700oC. Its developers ? Raymond Gorte, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, John Vohs, professor and chair of chemical engineering, Hyuk Kim, graduate student and Seungdoo Park, postdoctoral researcher ? hope a commercial fuel cell would generate such heat itself using the fuel placed inside it. Gorte, who is lead author of a paper in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society in which the finding is reported, comments: “This paper demonstrated that we could feed these liquids to a fuel cell using a method analogous to a fuel injector in an internal combustion engine and still get stable operation of the fuel cell.” Gorte and Vohs had earlier published results of their work in Nature. This paper, in March 2000, reported the development of a fuel cell able to run on butane, the first fuel cell to operate on fuel other than hydrogen. “In our earlier work we were unable to feed liquid diesel to the fuel cell because we did not have a means for vaporizing fuels that have a low vapour pressure at room temperature,” explains Gorte. The breakthrough could ultimately prove of particular value to the shipping industry, where fuel storage and system packaging onboard ship are very important.