| An invention with history Back
in the year 1839 the foundation stone for today's fuel cell technology has already
been laid. It was the Welsh justice and physician Sir William Robert Grove (1811-1896)
who developed the first working prototype. This prototype consisted of two platinum
electrodes which were separately surrounded by a glass cylinder. One of the cylinders
was filled with hydrogen the other with oxygen. Both electrodes were immersed
in diluted sulphuric acid - which was the electrolyte - and created the electric
connection. At the electrodes voltage was produced. This voltage was very low
and therefore Grove linked several of these fuel cells to get a higher voltage. Groves's
contemporaries underestimated the importance of his discovery and the fuel cell
was forgotten. Only in the 1950's, against the background of the Cold War, his
idea was taken up again. Space travel and military technology required compact
and powerful energy sources. Spacecraft
and submarines require electric power and it is not possible to work with internal
combustion engines. Because of batteries being too heavy for spacecrafts, NASA
(e.g. in the Apollo program) decided in favour of the direct chemical generation
of electric power by fuel cells. The
civil use of fuel cells became interesting only during the last years. At
the beginning of the 90's scientists and engineers developed different new concepts
and technologies which made it possible to increase efficiency continually and
to decrease costs at the same time. Today fuel cells can be used for a lot of
different applications: for vehicle engines, for residential heating systems and
also for big power stations with a power rating of several megawatts as well as
for smallest applications like in mobile phones or mobile computers. The
fuel cell really has the potential to revolutionise the world of energy technology! | 
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