Can you explain it in non-scientific terms? I need things that i will understand!
It's a different kind of motor that runs off of Hydrogen. By 'burning' hydrogen it creates a by product known as H2O (i.e. water). So, the exhaust is clean. It sounds really nice, and probably is, but it's not without it's problems. One of them is driving around with either liquid Hydrogen in your car (very very very cold stuff- hard to store and dangerous), or high pressure hydrogen (very flammable can you say Hindenburg?). The other thing is that it takes a lot of electricity to create the Hydrogen in the first place. So- if you happen to create hydrogen using 'green' sources of electricity that's good. If you burn gas to generate the electricity- then you're not really helping the environment. For right now- it's not practical, as there aren't any places to fill up your car with fresh hydrogen. So- the technology is limited to concept cars and demonstrators for now.
A fuel cell uses hydrogen as fuel to produce electricity. The exhaust is just water. Water is harmless to the environment.
It is a battery that uses hydrogen and oxygen instead of lead and acid or whatever regular batteries use. It is a chemical device that combines hydrogen with oxygen to make electricity directly, with water as the waste product. Since hydrogen, oxygen and water are not toxic, it is an environmentally friendly battery. The trouble is that it is expensive, as it the hydrogen needed to fuel it.
A plain fuel cell is just a fancy work for something like a gas tank. Race cars have fuel cells in them and it is just their safer gas tank than what is in a regular car. There are hydrogen fuel cells like the others are talking about but you need to add the word hydrogen to get those answers.
a hydrogen fuel cell is a way that they take hydrogen and combine it with oxygen to form water. The effect of forming water from its components causes heat and electricity, it makes them. They use the electricity generated. The ballard cell it way of getting electricity from hydrogen. The exhaust is water. I prefer hydrogen combustion myself such as the new 2007 bmw uses, the exhaust is also water which is a biproduct of burning hydrogen with oxygen. It is almost the opposite but the exhaust is water in both. I think you can see why it's muuuuuuuch better for the environment than sulphur cyanide and carbon monoxide etc. Ob1
