Factors Favouring Fuel Cell

• Varieties of sources for generating hydrogen are possible to reduce dependence on crude petroleum
• Vehicles with zero emissions of CO, HC, NO_x and PM can be built.
• On board reforming of methanol, ethanol or hydrocarbon fuels can be employed to generate hydrogen. Thus, the existing fuel distribution network can be used.
• Fuel cells are more efficient under part load operation than the IC engines. These are not limited by the Carnot efficiency. At full power output, the internal resistance and concentration polarization losses increase resulting in the loss of fuel-cell efficiency and it drops close to that of the IC engines. Efficiency of fuel cell is compared with that of gasoline and diesel engines on Fig. 7.17.