Fuel Cells

Abstract

The field of electrochemistry was discovered in 1791 when Luigi Galvani was dissecting a frog. One of his coworkers touched its internal crucial nerves with the tip of a scalpel causing the muscles and nerves of the frog to contract. Nine years later, Volta reported to the Royal Society in London that by placing a membrane in contact with silver and zinc plates, on either side, and wetting it in salt water, an electric current would flow in the external circuit connecting the silver and zinc plates (chemical to electrical energy conversion). This discovery was soon followed by that of the reverse process when Nicholson and Carlisle demonstrated in the same year that by connecting two wires of platinum, immersed in a dilute acid, to a battery, bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen evolved on the two electrodes (electricity to chemicals). The pioneering researcher in the field of electrochemistry, Michael Faraday, started his work in 1832, and proposed the two quantitative laws of electrolysis: