ABSTRACT
Energy consumption has increased dramatically during the past decades in order to functionalize electrical appliances, provide heat sources, generate light sources, and communicate in daily routine. With breakthroughs in technological developments, these electrical needs are intensified. All this requires an increase in the power of stationary generating stations. At the same time, the last decade has seen an explosion in the number of portable devices such as cell phones and notebooks, medical devices, military applications, microdevices, and microsystems, which integrate more complex and energy consuming functions like wireless communications enabling large data exchange off grid. These functions involve more power consumption even if a tremendous effort is done to lower application power needs. This means that in addition to the powerful stationary energy sources there is a great need for powerful portable energy sources. Research has shown that one of the most interesting and prospective approaches to resolving this problem is the generation of electrical energy from a chemical energy in fuel cells (Dyer 1990, 2002; Kundu et al. 2007), which have the following advantages: (1) better efficiency than combustion engines, (2) no moving parts, (3) quiet operation, (4) highly reliable, (5) long-lasting systems, and (6) no particular NOx and SOx emission. In addition, constructively, fuel cells have great potential for miniaturization, which is especially important for portable devices (Morse 2007). In addition, it is necessary to consider that the fuel cells are capable of providing much greater power density than existing energy sources, including lithium ion batteries (see Table 12.1). This means that the use of miniaturized fuel cells (FC) can provide continuous operation of portable devices, even with a small weight of energy source. Furthermore, recharging is instantaneous by replacement of the fuel cartridge.
