Fuel-cell powered railroads make sense. They would drastically cut down on the amount of oil used and reduce carbon emissions as well. Plus, they would be easy to refuel, as hydrogen tanks just need to be accessible to the rail lines and not on roads everywhere, as is true with fuel cell cars.

Hydrail has a wealth of information on this promising new use of fuel cells, including reports from their various conferences.

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From Gas 2.0.

Scientists have attached an air-electrode to Goretex, a breathable fiber, that acts as both a fuel cell electrode and catalyst. This eliminates the need for platinum in fuel cells.

“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.”

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This new concept car from Japan is powered by fuel cells with hydrogen created real time from water. Thus, it can run for as long as it has water as a fuel source. The hydrogen does not need to be made in advance and stored in the car.

Update: Jonathan Lundell in the comments whacks me upside the head with the Second Law of Thermodynamics stick, and SlashDot agrees.

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These fuel cell boosters increase power, dramatically boost mpg - and run on ordinary tap water.

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Whole Foods Market in Glastonbury, Connecticut has decided to install a hydrogen-powered fuel cell to supply ½ of their electricity and almost 100-percent of their hot water.

Plus, heat from the fuel cells will be used to heat the store. It’ll also be used as emergency power backup in case of power outages. Plus, of course, fuel cells output practically no carbon.

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Instead, they will focus on improving EV batteries so a car can go 300 miles without recharging. Among the reasons, fuel cells remain too expensive for mass transport and there is no infrastructure in place to distribute hydrogen.

However fuel cells still have applications in stationary power generation, etc.

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From UTC Power. Fuel cells take a chemical input and convert it directly to electricity, outputting only water and heat with no carbon as byproducts. Most use hydrogen, which can be produced by solar, which means the entire process is extremely clean.

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[Thomas] Wood, a professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M, successfully tweaked a strain of E. coli to get it to produce 140 times more hydrogen than it does naturally.

Wood is “is already confident of its potential to power the next generation of homes and vehicles.”

Genetic engineering is a) inevitable and b) quite obviously producing useful products. Will there be frankenmutations that escape and morph in the wild into something unexpected and not so useful? Dunno, but a tweak like this that produces enormous amounts of hydrogen could be a boon to the widespread adoption of fuel cells.

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Markets for portable power could be the most suitable arenas for fuel cells to begin taking on established energy sources.

Among the key benefits, these technologies exhibit a far better weight-versus-energy characteristic than conventional batteries.

This includes cell phones, laptops, and other portable devices. Hey, maybe one day we’ll have fuel cell powered iPods!

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A fuel cell converts the chemicals hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in the process it produces electricity.

They are highly efficient at producing energy and in most cases emit no pollution. If the hydrogen that fuels them is produced using clean, renewable energy like wind, then the entire chain is zero pollution. Hydrogen can also be produced from waste water and other waste materials, as well as being a leftover byproduct of manufacturing and thus available for use.

So, you can see why fuel cells are a Holy Grail of energy. If we can make them work on a mass scale, then oil consumption and carbon emissions would drop substantially.

More from DOE (where the image came from)

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Hydrogen fuel cells for cell phones are expected to be in production by 2010, with twice the power of standard batteries, and they recharge in just 10 minutes.

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A zero emission fuel cell ferry will be shuttling passengers across Alster Lake in Germany this summer. Added bonus. It only needs to be refueled every three days and, of course, it produces no pollution.

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