Fuel Cells

CRDS for Fuel Cell Development

Fuel cell technology continues to advance at a fast pace. While automotive applications have the highest profile, the development of miniaturized fuel cells for consumer electronics applications is also quite advanced. In a fuel cell, hydrogen or some other fuel is oxidized in an electrolytic process rather than by combustion. Hydrogen cells are the greenest fuel sources since they produce only water as an end product. But there are numerous other possible "renewable" fuel sources that can be used, including methanol and ethanol. Under non-optimized conditions, some of these fuel cells can produce trace amounts of harmful gases and catalytic poisons. Picarro CRDS analyzers are being used in the design, development and optimization of such fuel cells because they can easily monitor any of these toxic species or any combination of them at the ppbv and pptv level.