how to make a fuel cell?
153000
http://www.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell.htm\n\nhttp://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid537.php\n\nhttp://www.wisconsinpublicservice.com/news/cells/work.asp\n\nhttp://americanhistory.si.edu/fuelcells/basics.htm
430141
I will make NaOH from the electrolysis of brine(saturated NaCl solution) using graphite anode and mercury cathode. On electrolysis, sodium will combine with mercury to form sodium amalgam(Na/Hg). Then make that sodium amalgam to combine with water(H20) so that we can get NaOH.
862652
Make Your Own Gelled Alcohol Fuel - Canned Heat\n \nExtreme do it yourselfers can make their own gelled fuel at home with by mixing alcohol and calcium acetate (C4H6CaO4).\n \nThe following instructions and measurements are from the Montville High School Science Departmental.\n \nAdd 25g of crushed chalk or egg shells (calcium carbonate-CaCO3) to 100ml of vinegar (water and acetic acid - CH3CO2H) and stir for about 5 minutes.\nThis should produce carbon dioxide (CO2), calcium acetate (C4H6CaO4) and water (H2O) plus leave you with some left over chalk (CaCO3).  If you are guessing on how much chalk to add, just make sure that there is a little extra after 5 minutes of stirring.\n \nRemove the excess chalk by filtering your mix through some filter paper (coffee filter or napkin can be used).\nSet a funnel in a jar, place your filter in it and pour your suspension through it.\n \nMark the level of your solution in its container and allow your solution to evaporate off about half that volume to remove the excess water.\nPlace your solution in an oven set on low heat or place it out in the sun to dry.  If you went to far - just add the missing water.\nNote - if you like, you can dry out your solution completely and store the remaining dried calcium acetate for future use.\n \nIf your solution isn't already in the container you want your gel in, then pour it in there now.\n \nAdd 30ml of alcohol (ethanol, methanol, or isopropanol) to your solution and watch the gel form.  Do not stir.\n \nOnce the reaction in complete, pour off any extra fuel.\n \n \nY2kSurvivor suggests:\nDissolved calcium acetate solution ratio:\n1 part dry calcium acetate (by volume) to 2 parts water\n \nSolution to fuel ratio:\n1 part dissolved calcium acetate solution to 4 parts alcohol\n \nAlso see:\nCanned Heat: Alcohol Gels - University of Wisconsin\nCanned Heat An Alcohol Gel - Chem Matters\nCanned Heat: Sterno - Normal Community High school
51965
Hmm...  If I remember the physics right, it goes like this: Take two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen and mix them in a chamber with a catalyst and a proton exchange membrane and you get water and electricity.
809942
Here is an idea.\nCompare power supplies by weight, volume and power density using various batteries.\n\nThere are many batteries on the market now, so it might be very educational for you and anyone looking at your project.\n\nConsider using the following batteries:\nLead acid battery\nLithium-ion battery\nLithium ion polymer battery\nNickel-cadmium battery\nNickel metal hydride battery\nMolten salt battery\nSilver-oxide battery\nWater-activated batteries used in radiosondes\n\nYou could compare different AA batteries of different types and costs.\n\nA good starting point for references on batteries is on Wikipedia:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batteries\n\nYou might even be able to get a small prototype fuel cell if you ask to work with a battery manufacturer, a research company, or someone like NASA.\n\nYou should start thinking of what kind of a hypothesis you could write to kick of the experiment.  Hint: Don't worry if your experiment fails and you fail to prove your hypothesis. Sometimes the best experiments are failures!\n\nHope this helps!
1045890
Its best to think of hydrogen as a 'battery' rather than a power source.  Because we don't have incredibly abundant supplies of free hydrogen on earth, it is not practical for use as an initial energy source.  You are also right in your assertion that it will always take at least as much energy to create hydrogen as we can get by using it, in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics.  \n\nHydrogen is, however, viable as an environmentally friendly fuel to operate vehicles.  This is because the conversion of hydrogen into energy is essentially pollution free and is of high efficiency.  Thus if we use an environmentally friendly power source, such as solar power, to produce the hydrogen, we can run vehicles in an essentially pollution free manner.  As a result, a switch to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles would allow reductions in the overall emissions of our national power production to be reflected in reduced total energy cycle emissions of our vehicles.
335008
Fuel cells are like a battery that never dies.\nYou just keep adding fuel.\nAnd you dont keep throw away dead battery with toxic metals.\n\nBut the cost is not practical for now, but i think it is the future when all the Engineering issues are worked out.
183390
Note that fuel cells do not operate on a thermal cycle. The fuel cell contineously replenishes its rxtant by converting energy from an external source (hydrogen /Oxygen) to electricity (1st law in ref to cons of energy)
328055
One current method, is called PEM, or proton exchange membrane fuel cells.  How it works:\n\nHydrogen (H2) molecules are split by way of an anode, into protons and electrons.  The membrane allows protons to pass through and blocks electrons.  This creates an electric potential,  as well as a direct current (DC) as collected electrons move around the membrane to the other side, to recombine with the H+ ions (protons) as well as O2 molecules, creating byproducts of water and heat.  This DC could ideally power anything from a light bulb to propelling an automobile if the electricity were converted to mechanical energy (like in the electric motor portion of a hybrid automobile).\n\nThe difficulty comes in getting the hydrogen.  While the byproduct of a hydrogen powered car is water and heat, which do not hurt the atmosphere, the creation of purified hydrogen, does require energy as well as gives off large amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas.  Some work is being done into looking into renewable energy sources to power the purification process (wind power, solar power, nuclear power, etc) as well as methods of "burying" the produced CO2 underground, so that it is not released into the atmosphere.
513117
use a potato and two different metals as electrodes. The link will help you, do your own homework, or web searching atleast! it was the second link in google for g** sake!
319335
It's liquid hydrogen and oxygen.  I imagine they just make it in a factory by cooling down those gases to very low temperatures.
1126712
Yes, we've known about electrolysis for a long time.  It's how submarines make breathable air while submerged -- they electrolyze seawater and just bubble the hydrogen overboard while releasing oxygen gas into the boat.  However, it takes a lot of energy to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen, which isn't a concern in a small space with a nuclear reactor to power everything, but it isn't a 100% efficient conversion of electrical energy into chemical potential energy.  There is a loss of energy due to heat, for instance (the electrodes heat up with current passing through them, and even the wiring that carries it there), and as with any energy system, you have to take entropy into account.  Depending on who you talk to, you can get anywhere from 50% up to 94% efficiency, but you'll always put more energy into it than you get out of burning the hydrogen later on down the line.  The reason we're still researching fuel cell and hydrogen cars comes from the mechanical efficiency of the different types of engines -- you currently still get more bang for your buck out of fuels than from an electric motor-driven car.  The energy is only reusable if burning the hydrogen generates the electricity to separate the water back into hydrogen again, in which case, you're talking about a perpetual motion system, and that's physically impossible.
803196
Fuel Cell, device in which the energy of a chemical reaction is converted directly into electricity. Unlike a battery, a fuel cell does not run down; it operates as long as fuel and an oxidant are supplied continuously from outside the cell. Several companies are developing fuel cells that they hope will replace conventional internal-combustion engines in automobiles over the next few decades.\n\nA fuel cell consists of an anode, the positive end of an electric circuit, and a cathode, the negative end of an electric circuit, separated by an electrolyte. Electrolytes are substances that allow ions (particles formed when a neutral atom or molecule gains or loses one or more electrons) to pass through them. Fuel flows to the anode, and an oxidant flows to the cathode. The chemical reaction between the fuel and the oxidant produces an electric current. Various fuels may be used, but research and development in recent years has focused on hydrogen fuel cells.\n\nIn a hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen is supplied to the fuel cell’s anode, and an oxidant, commonly the oxygen present in air, is supplied to the cathode. The fuel cell strips electrons from the hydrogen atoms. These electrons move from the anode through the electric circuit to the cathode, creating an electric current that can be tapped to provide power. The electron-deficient hydrogen atoms meanwhile pass through the electrolyte to the cathode. There the electrons that passed through the circuit recombine with the electron-deficient hydrogen atoms. Oxygen (from the air) reacts with this reformed hydrogen, producing water. Water produced at the cathode has to be removed continuously to avoid flooding the cell.\n\nHydrogen fuel cells hold great promise as low-pollution automobile engines if certain difficulties can be overcome. Water, the only waste product of a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell, is nonpolluting and can be used to cool the engine. The oxygen the cells need is readily available in air. Hydrogen, however, is not so readily available, and there is no existing delivery system to convey hydrogen to all the places people would need it to power their cars. In addition, pure hydrogen is not abundant enough to provide power for all the cars on the road today. Instead, hydrogen would need to be extracted from other substances, a process that requires energy and produces pollutants.
415884
Check this link:\n\nhttp://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Hb_4_LKfVd4J:www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/progress05/vi_b_1_wu.pdf+how+to+make+sodium+borohydride%3F&hl=en&gl=in&ct=clnk&cd=7&client=firefox-a
1000924
The electrolysis process seperates water into hydrogen and oxygen, and it requires a great deal of energy. Loosely speaking, if you reversed the process, you could get energy out of it, which, I believe, is what hydrogen fuel cell vehicles do.\n\nHowever, a system like this has to take seperated hydrogen and oxygen as input, not water. The reason is that the vehicle would have to run the electrolysis process forward, and then in reverse! The laws of thermodynamics tell us that energy will always be lost, and never gained, by such a process.\n\nHydrogen fuel cell vehicles would have to be supported by large electrical plants (nuclear preferably) which powered factories that ran the first part of the process. Energy is still lost in the end, but the overall cycle is highly efficient.
801098
You'll have to explain what you mean by solar hydrogen panels. \n\nThe most common is through steam reforming which must be done on an industrial scale. Steam reforming uses separates hydrogen from the carbon components in methane and methanol on catalytic surfaces. Something that would be impossible outside a very advanced lab or factory.\n\nThe second most common method of extracting hydrogen from water is through electrolysis where voltage is applied to water.  You can make some at home quite easily and safely. You just need a 9V battery, some wire, and the cleanest water you can find.\n\nYou simply place the two wires in the water while connected to the battery and hydrogen bubbles start forming. Use salt to make it more efficient.\n\nSee this site for more info.\nhttp://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Stories/001.1/
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A simple voltaic device can be made with a piece of fruit and 2 pieces of dissimilar metals.  It won't run your house even if you have lots of them.  The juice serves only as the electrolyte, not the energy source.\n\nFor real power, you'd need to ferment and distil the juice and put it in a fuel cell.  There's lots of fuel cell info online.