It seems that a Japanese company known as Genepax is touting an over-sized battery as a fuel cell that runs on plain old water and air. The system uses what the company has termed a “membrane electrode assembly,” or MEA, to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen through a “chemical reaction.” Well of course it’s a chemical reaction, you start with one chemical and end up with two different ones!
Us sciency types like to call something like this a perpetual motion machine: something that generates energy from “nothing.” The problem is this: you can combine Oxygen and Hydrogen (i.e. combust the Hydrogen) to produce water and, in the process, release energy in the form of heat (or, as with a typical fuel cell, electricity). By putting water into this new-fangled contraption, Genepax claims that you can both release energy (presumably in the form of electricity) and split water into it’s component elements — something that typically requires large amounts of energy to achieve in the first place.
What it comes down to is that this is not a catalytic process as we would be led to believe; something within the fuel cell stack is being consumed — as in it is acting as a reagent and not a catalyst — to split the Oxygen and Hydrogen. Once whatever this substance is runs out, the “fuel cell” will simply cease to function. This is much more akin to a battery than to a true fuel cell.
In fact, this whole point is given away in the article itself (emphasis mine):
Though the company did not reveal the details, it “succeeded in adopting a well-known process to produce hydrogen from water to the MEA,” said Hirasawa Kiyoshi, the company’s president. This process is allegedly similar to the mechanism that produces hydrogen by a reaction of metal hydride and water. But compared with the existing method, the new process is expected to produce hydrogen from water for longer time, the company said.
A true fuel cell should be able to convert fuel (in this case, supposedly water) into products of reaction ad infinitum until the hardware itself wears out due to corrosion etc.
Myth busted!
BOYCOTT ALL CARS THAT ARE LESS THAN 100 MPG
Do you want to see a quick resolution to the energy crisis?
The public should boycott from purchasing any vehicle that is less than 100 mpg.
That is surely to grab the automobile industry attention worldwide to produce an energy efficient car that does 100 mpg or better on alternative energy – the vehicle must be pollution free.
“The ‘big three’ is not the ‘big three’ anymore,” Iacocca told National Public Radio, referring to the falling sales of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. “[They] didn’t adapt quickly enough to the energy problem in this country [and were] not ready with the right kind of cars.”
Any big corporation that is too bureaucratic and cumbersome to quickly react to changing market conditions is doomed to failure.
In today’s fast moving market conditions and technology – you must be innovative, utilize the cutting edge of technology and produce a quality and economical product.
The public has a short memory, all they care is what have you done for me lately.
In life we must always live in hope.
Jay Draiman