Power Cells As Alternative To Oil

As oil and gasoline prices rise, much hay is being made regarding the
possibilities of power cells as a solution to our oil addictions. Here's
a basic primer on power cells.

As oil and gasoline prices rise, much hay is being made regarding the
possibilities of power cells as a solution to our oil addictions. Here's
a basic primer on power cells.

Power Cells As Alternative To Oil

More than a few politicians have argued that power cells have the
potential to cure all our energy problems. They argue power cells offer
clean, efficient alternatives to the gasoline and oil burning combustion
engine we all use in our vehicles. They also argue that switching to
power cells will go a long way to dealing with global warming issues
since this form of power does not produce the greenhouse gases seen with
oil products. Instead, they produce water and heat. For once, the
politicians may just be right for once.

Power cells use hydrogen or hydrogen derived sources to create
electricity. Much like a single solar cell is not particularly good at
producing power, a single power cell produces a fraction of the energy
required to power most things of consequence. Like solar, the cell must
be combined with others to get the necessary production. Temperature and
the pressure of the hydrogen are also factors. To really make things
work, such as a car, most power cells are actually a combination of
hundreds or thousands of sub-cells. This, of course, results in problems
of storage and stability. The more cells there are, the more space they
take up. The more cells there are sitting next to each other, the hotter
they get.

The current problems with these hydrogen power cells are numerous. They
do not produce power on a cost-effective basis. They have not proven to
be particularly durable, which means the need to replace them fairly
frequently runs up the cost of owning them. A practical, but
significant, problem is how to store and provide the hydrogen to users
on a daily basis. Hydrogen can be unstable, which makes for big, pretty
and expensive bangs. Most of these problems, however, will be overcome
as technology progresses.

Once technology advances, the applications power cells can be used for
are nearly endless. They can be used to run your laptop or your car.
They can be used to provide electricity and heat in your home as well as
your business. In our technology crazed society, they will even power
your cell phones. If it can be run on electricity, power cells should be
able to make it work.

Power cells aren't the current answer to our oil problem, but that may
change in the relatively short future.