Why just burn natural gas?

The growing need for reliable, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly power sources might be addressed with the development of fuel cells that run on natural gas.

Fuel cell company Nuvera, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts has announced the successful demonstration of a 5kW natural gas fuel cell that is being used to power a telecommunications system for a major companies international headquarters, where 1,200 people work.

The companies involved in the trial hope to gain a better understanding of performance requirements for power generation equipment in an area that relies on a very constant and stable voltage. The first phase will last two years and Phase 2 will look into the possibility of using fuel cell technology at a community-based, but remote site, where grid electricity is unviable.

Reliability requirements have intensified in some industries such as telecommunications, where the proliferation of computers, the Internet, and communication networks call for more reliable power than is available on the current electric grid, said a Nuvera spokesman.

Fuel cells were first discovered in the nineteenth century, when amateur physicist William Grove used hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity. Nuvera uses a proton-exchange membrane fuel cell in which two electrodes are separated by a thin film material. Hydrogen, derived from methane in this case, is fed to the anode while oxygen is fed to the cathode. Hydrogen ions (protons) generated diffuse through the membrane while the electrons released travel in the opposite direction. The result - a current flows.