Archive for the ‘Fuel Cells’ Category
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February 12th, 2010
Gold for good – a new article from the WGC
Yesterday we released a new publication written by the World Gold Council and Cientifica called ‘Gold for good – gold and nanotechnology in the age of innovation’. The article, which is freely available on both the WGC and Cientifica websites, discusses the past, present and future of gold-based nanotechnology, focusing on key areas in medicine, the environment and technology.I am attending the 2010 Nanotech Japan event in Tokyo next week where I will be launching the article, and will follow this with a trip to the ACS spring meeting in California towards the end of March. Feel free to drop me a line if you are attending either event, I’d be happy to discuss any aspect of the WGCs activities, including our funding and investment programmes.
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December 21st, 2009
New Book – Gold Science and Applications
I’m excited to announce that a new book ‘Gold – Science and Applications’ has now been published.
There have been many excellent books written on certain aspects of the science and technology of gold, most notably the book of the Hanau gold conference, held in 1996 (“Gold. Progress in Chemistry, Biochemistry and Technology”, edited by Hubert Schmidbaur and published in 1999) and there are several new books covering specific sectors of gold science e.g. on catalysis, chemistry and nanotechnology (see here). However, for those seeking a broader reference source on gold and covering all technical sectors, the most appropriate book on gold, Gold Usage by Bill Rapson and Theo Groenewald, was published over 30 years ago in 1978. The world of gold has changed considerably since then. A few years ago Chris Corti and I believed it was time for an updated book that reflects the more recent developments.
With the co-operation of some of the leading experts in their field, we have attempted to produce a book that is a worthy successor to ‘Rapson’ and to provide an authoritive source of information. We have attempted to cover all the main scientific areas as well as the main areas of application. In some cases this has required some very detailed scientific chapters; other fields require less specific detail and have focused more on the practical application. In addition, to help readers place this science and technology in the context of a much wider gold market, a chapter on the supply, demand and pricing of gold is included. Taken together, our aim for the book is to appeal to both those working in academia and industry.
If you are interested, your can read more and purchase it here .
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December 14th, 2009
Update – Au Nanoclad
My last post on the use of gold coated stainless steel bipolar plates for fuel cells was here. Since then, Ford researchers have published this paper describing in detail the testing of this material. It looks very promising.At the same time, according to Daido Steel, the 10 nanometre gold coated stainless steel provides good impact resistance, formability, recyclability. Volume and weight reduction of a PEM FC can be achieved by using this material compared to a carbon separator plate.
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November 23rd, 2009
Alkaline fuel cell membranes
Alkaline fuel cells have been around for years. The Space Shuttle fuel cells (and fuel cells used on the Apollo missions before them) have all used alkaline fuel cells. This is interesting for us working in precious metals because the commonly used Nafion fuel cell membrane operates under acid conditions and requires the use of platinum electrocatalysts. However, under alkaline conditions the chemistry of the fuel cell is obviously very different and it means that the platinum group metals are not necessarily the best electrocatalysts in the fuel cell. For example, World Gold Council sponsored work a couple of years ago that showed gold electrocatalysts were very promising alternatives for oxygen reduction in fuel cells operating under alkaline conditions. However, in order to exploit this what is needed is a reliable alkaline alternative to nafion i.e. an anion exchange membrane.
In a recent development Yushan Yan, chemical and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Riverside, and his team have developed an alkaline membrane, which contains the polymeric ionomer TPQPOH with a tris(2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl)phosphonium unit. TPQPOH is very soluble in low-temperature water-soluble solvents, and has high ionic conductivity and alkaline stability. The membrane works on the basis of hydroxide ion exchange rather than hydrogen ion exchange. We’ll be keeping an eye on this development and what it may mean for gold in fuel cells…..
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October 27th, 2009
Ford Motor Company and Au Nanoclad™
Some weeks ago I posted on the subject of fuel cell separator plates and how gold-coated stainless steel was proven to be the best material for this application, in terms of conductivity and durability. The only issue was cost – what was need was a reduced thickness gold coating, still displaying the performance of a thicker coating.
Well, according to a presentation to be made at Fuel Cells Durability & Performance 2009 (December 8-9, 2009 · Alexandria, VA USA) The Ford Motor Company is to present on ”Nanometer Range Gold Coated Stainless Steel for Automotive Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell Bipolar Plate”.
Apparently, Ford is currently developing metallic bipolar plate technology with thin gold-coated stainless steel (under the brand name Au Nanoclad™) provided by Daido Steel. They claim that the use of nanometer range gold coating delivers the required electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance with least impact of cost of gold. Additionally, gold-coated stainless steel shows anodic passivation, thereby exhibiting robustness towards coating defects including surface scratches during the manufacturing of the bipolar plate. Apparently the presentation at the conference will include the ex-situ and in-situ testing data for this material.Looks like a potentially fantastic new use for gold if the fuel cell market takes off…..
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October 15th, 2009
Most-cited Energy and Fuels
I’ve just received news of the Top 20 most-cited articles published in Energy and Fuels during the last three years and the list includes ‘Chemical Fluid Deposition of Pt-Based Bimetallic Nanoparticles on Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes for Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Application’ *. This paper describes how bimetallic formulations including platinum-gold display an efficiency to oxidize methanol to carbon dioxide at least 60% better than the monometallic Pt nanoparticle catalysts reported previously.
* Energy Fuels, 2007, 21 (4), pp 2268–2271
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September 14th, 2009
Fuel cell research funding remains
It is well known that US Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s planned to cut hydrogen research in the US and move away from the development of hydrogen and fuel cell cars. However, these plans were recently rejected by Congress and the 2010 spending bills recently approved in the House and Senate will continue funding for the programs.
According to Fuel Cell Today, the Secretary has come out saying he will work with lawmakers to ensure that the restored funding is invested wisely and suggested that he would not seek to cut funding for the programme in the next financial year. It is expected that further funding from the DOE will be forthcoming - for hydrogen production, storage, and fuel cell systems. This is good news for promising applications like palladium-gold hydrogen purification membranes which are showing real promise and gold-plated stainless steel biploar plates.
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August 11th, 2009
Separator Plates in PEM’s
It would still take a brave man to predict if and when fuel cells will enter mainstream production as an automotive power source. The remaining barriers and issues are many, and are complicated by ‘external’ influences like the price of oil. Putting that aside, if they do enter high volume production PEM fuel cells offer a potential new source of demand for gold, in a number of different fuel cell applications – as previously highlighted here. One specific fuel cell component where gold already is a material (coating) of choice is for separator plate coatings in automotive PEM fuel cells as described in this recent paper. As the author points out:
……in the aggressive fuel cell environment, corrosion of metal plates can significantly effect fuel cell performance while passivation can also lead to increased ohmic losses. The only metal plate material studied in the literature which meets the performance targets for contact resistance and corrosion is gold coated stainless steel.
As engineers focus on cost reduction it will be interesting to see if gold remains the optimum material here…
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June 2nd, 2009
New Gold Paste
Over the last few years the increase in the size of the fuel size market has, at best, been steady rather than exciting and the new US administration’s plan to cut funding for hydrogen and fuel cell funding isn’t going to help matters. Despite this, research into new precious metal electrocatalysts continues. Last month, this paper suggested the addition of gold to a new catalyst would offer additional performance benefits.
Whilst this is promising, gold already has a role in other fuel cell components such as bi-polar plate coatings. Here is a newly developed gold conductor which can be used as an interconnect paste in solid oxide and other fuel cells. It is a fritless gold paste that is designed to be used on tape-cast SOFC materials.
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May 8th, 2009
Hydrogen purification membranes
In the heart of the old gold mining region called Golden in Colorado, they are working on what could potentially be an important new industrial application for gold. …..Today I had a project review meeting at the Colorado School of Mines where a research group led by Prof Doug Way is further improving the alloys used in hydrogen purification using palladium membranes. This is an important technology for the emerging hydrogen economy and fuel cell power systems.
Doug Way’s team has demonstrated that the use of palladium-gold alloys in this application has clear advantages, especially with respect to reducing poisoning of the membrane with sulphur and carbon monoxide. He and his team have made great strides since his early findings and their latest results are summarised in a new publication ‘F. Roa, P.M. Thoen, S.K. Gade, J.D. Way, S. DeVoss, G.O. Alptekin, Palladium-copper and palladium-gold alloy composite membranes for hydrogen separations, in Inorganic membranes for energy and environmental applications, A.C. Bose, Editor. 2009, Springer: New York p. 221-239.’ See here.
The Wade research group will also be presenting their work on these membranes at GOLD 2009.
Trevor Keel
Richard Holliday
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