Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Fuel cells might become dominant power source

Staff Reporter

They can soon overtake gasoline engines used in vehicles

Coimbatore: Fuel cells that supply renewable energy may replace gasoline engines as the dominant power source in transport vehicles, S. Sivasubramanian, Vice-Chancellor, Bharathiar University, said here on Tuesday.

He was presiding over the 7th National Conference on solid state ionics organised by the University in collaboration with Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences (KITS) Deemed University.

Prof. Sivasubramanian said that fuel cells that could be recharged even when drawing power from them, were already providing renewable energy for spacecraft.

Such energy devices were poised to come into widespread use in a variety of places including offices and hospitals.

He said that experts had predicted that fuel cell vehicles could become a reality by 2010 and that the devices could overtake the gasoline-based internal combustion engine as the "dominant source of power for personal transportation". Researchers were working on advanced batteries that were cheaper and lighter.

One of the main challenges before researchers in the field of solid state ionics was the production of a lightweight, cost-effective, high density and safe power source that could be easily recharged.

Devices such as camcorders and notebook computers required power that should preferably come from environment-friendly batteries that did not contain pollutants such as mercury. It was important for scientists in the country to examine ways to design fuel cells that could power cars.

S. V. Bhat, Professor of Physics, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, said that scientists had begun understanding more about ionic conductors that could be used in cellular phones and wristwatches.

"Fuel cells promise to be the next source of clean power for automobiles. In solid state ionics we have done some fairly good work and the time has come to go a step forward and reach higher levels," he observed, adding that competition in the field would come from all over the world.

Besides developing advanced batteries that would have several commercial uses, Indian scientists should aim at obtaining more patents, publishing technical papers and becoming leaders in some sectors of ionics.

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