It gives me great pleasure to introduce six papers in the area of fuel cell science and engineering for this special issue of the Journal of Power and Energy. Fuel cells are of interest in future energy systems as they offer the highest efficiency for electricity generation of any energy conversion device of the equivalent scale, and can be operated on a wide range of fuels with very low levels of emissions, from hydrogen through fossil fuels to biogas. The challenge for the fuel cell industry lies in engineering cost-effective and durable devices that allow these benefits to be realized. The six papers presented in this issue address important aspects of this challenge, focusing on polymer and solid oxide fuel cells. Two papers by Scott address important materials challenges in polymer fuel cells, first in the area of catalysis for oxygen reduction and second in the field of alkaline membrane fuel cells, which offer the potential for significant cost reduction. A third paper in this area from Shukla discusses the design and development of a polymer fuel cell system. Pharoah et al. present work concerning transport in
展开▼
