Clothing fuels hybrid cars

The cell revolves around a design using a specially coated form of high-tech outdoor and sporting clothing material called Goretex.

The scientists have designed and tested an air-electrode, where a fine layer, 0.4 of a micron thick, of highly conductive plastic is deposited on the breathable fabric. The conductive plastic acts as both the fuel cell electrode and catalyst.

The university's Dr Bjorn Winther-Jensen said just as Goretex has revolutionised the outdoor clothing industry, it could hold similar promise for motorists.

"The same way as waste vapour is drawn out of this material to make hikers more comfortable, so it is able to 'breathe' oxygen into our fuel cell and into contact with the conductive plastic," he said.

Prof Doug MacFarlane from the Australian Centre for Electromaterials Science (ACES) said the discovery was probably the most important development in fuel cell technology in the last 20 years.

"The benefits for the motoring industry and for motorists are that the new design removes the need for platinum, which acts as the catalyst and is currently central to the manufacturing process," MacFarlane said.

"Our reliance on platinum is making the likelihood of using fuel cells in everyday passenger cars increasingly improbable.

"The cost of the platinum component alone of current fuel cells for a small car with a 100 kW electric engine is more than the total cost of an 100 kW petrol engine. Also, current annual world production of platinum is only sufficient for about 3 million 100 kW vehicles, less than a twentieth of the current annual global production of vehicles."

The new design fuel cell has been tested for up to 1500 hours continuously using hydrogen as the fuel source.

Prof Maria Forsyth, director of ACES at Monash, said testing has shown no sign of material degradation or deterioration in performance. The tests also confirmed that oxygen conversion rates are comparable with platinum-catalysed electrodes of the same geometry and they found that electrodes are not poisoned by carbon monoxide, which happens with platinum use.

"The small amounts of carbon monoxide that are always present in exhausts from petrol engines are a real problem for fuel cells because the platinum catalyst is slowly poisoned, eventually destroying the cell," Forsyth said.

"The important point to stress is that the team has come up with an alternative fuel cell design that is more economical, more easily sourced, outlasts platinum cells and is just as effective."