Hydrogen-powered cars create no planet-overheating air pollution while in use and even have several advantages over environmentally friendly battery electric cars.
However, the technology is not quite there to encourage mass adoption of these vehicles. Some new advancements from researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden could help to eventually change that, though, SciTechDaily reported.
One big issue with hydrogen cars is that the fuel cells used to power them degrade fairly quickly, making the life cycles of the cars shorter than other types of vehicles on the market.
In order to figure out how to solve this problem, the Chalmers research team used advanced electron microscopes to track a specific particle in the fuel cell during the cycles of use.
The team was able to get more specific and precise information about how the fuel cell degrades, which could lead to the development of a longer-lasting cell.
"We have now laid a foundation on which to build for the development of better fuel cells," said Björn Wickman, an associate professor at the department of physics at Chalmers and the lead researcher on the project, per SciTechDaily.
"Now we know more about the processes that take place in the fuel cell and at what point over the lifetime of the fuel cell they occur. In the future, the method will be used to develop and study new materials that can give the fuel cell a longer lifespan."
There are other hurdles that hydrogen-powered cars must clear as well to make them more commercially viable, MIT reported, including the fact that a lot of infrastructure would have to be built around them (as it has been with electric vehicles and charging stations).
Another big issue with hydrogen cars is that, at present, nearly all of the hydrogen fuel being produced involves a process that uses methane, creating lots of planet-overheating air pollution, as the U.S. Department of Energy explained.
To be truly viable as a clean energy source, hydrogen fuel needs to produce no or little air pollution while it is being made, not just at the point of use.
Still, none of these problems are insurmountable, and these developments from Chalmers are a step in the right direction toward bringing hydrogen-powered cars into the mainstream and helping to reduce planet-overheating air pollution.
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