Cool Fuel Cells |Tweet|Cool Fuel Cells Fuel cells promise to be
the environmentally-friendly power source of the future, but
some types run too hot to be practical. NASA-funded research may
have a solution. March 18, 2003: Astronauts have been using them
for power aboard spacecraft since the 1960s. Soon, perhaps,
they'll be just as common on Earth--powering cars, trucks,
laptop computers and cell phones. They're called fuel cells. By
combining hydrogen fuel with oxygen, fuel cells can produce
plenty of electric power while emitting only pure water as
exhaust. They're so clean that astronauts actually drink the
water produced by fuel cells on the space shuttle. Right: The
Toyota FINE-S, a hydrogen fuel-cell hybrid-electric concept
vehicle revealed at the North American International Auto Show
in January 2003. Copyright Toyota Motors. [more] Now NASA-
sponsored research is helping to tackle some of these obstacles.
By finding a way to build "solid oxide" fuel cells that operate
at half the temperature of current