The principle of operation of the fuel cell was discovered by the scientist Christian Friedrich Sch nbein in Switzerland in 1838 and published in the January 1839 ion of the Philosophical Magazine. ” According to this study, the first was developed in 1843 by Sir William Grove, a Welsh scientist, using materials similar to those used today for the phosphoric acid cell. It was not until 1959 that British engineer Francis Thomas Bacon successfully developed a stationary fuel cell of 5 kW. In 1959, a team led by Harry Ihrig built tractor based on a fuel cell of 15 kW for Allis-Chalmers which was exposed in the U.S. at the state fair. This system used potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte and compressed hydrogen and oxygen as reagents.Later in 1959, Bacon and his colleagues built a 5 kW unit capable of powering a welding machine, which led in the 60s to Bacon patents licensed by Pratt and Whitney in the United States (at least original idea) were used in the U.S. space program to provide astronauts electricity and drinking water from hydrogen and oxygen tanks available on the spacecraft. In parallel with Pratt Whitney Aircraft, General Electric developed the first cell proton exchange membrane (PEMFCs) for the Gemini space missions of NASA. The first mission was the Gemini used PEFCs V. However, the missions of the Apollo program and subsequent missions Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab and shuttle-based fuel cell used in the design of Bacon, developed by Pratt Whitney Aircraft.UTX, UTC Power subsidiary was the first company to manufacture and market a system of stationary fuel cells on a large scale for use as a cogeneration power plant in hospitals, universities and large office buildings. UTC Power continues marketed under the name of PureCell 200, a 200 kilowatt system, and remains the only supplier to NASA for use in spacecraft, currently providing the space shuttle. It is also developing fuel cells for cars, buses and mobile antennas. In the automotive market, UTC Power manufactured the first able to start at low temperatures cell proton exchange membrane (PEM). The materials used were extremely expensive and fuel cells require very pure hydrogen and oxygen. The first fuel cells used to require very high temperatures were a problem in many applications.However, continued research on fuel cells because of the large amounts of available fuel (hydrogen and oxygen). Despite their success in space programs, these systems were limited to special applications where cost is not a problem. It was not until the late ’80s and early ’90s that fuel cells became a real option for wider use. Several innovations, less platinum catalyst thin-film electrodes lowered their cost, making the development of PEMFC systems (for, say, cars) I was being realistic. Gerhard Ertl, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2007, was the discoverer of the operation of fuel cells.
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