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Fuel Cell Being Tested The new fuel cell being tested in the lab. Credit: Imperial College London Imperial researchers have developed a new hydrogen fuel cell that uses iron instead of rare and costly platinum, enabling greater use of the technology. Hydrogen fuel cells convert hydrogen to electricity with just water vapor as a byproduct, making them an appealing green alternative for portable power, particularly for vehicles. However, the expense of one of the primary components has impeded its broad adoption. The fuel cells rely on a catalyst made of platinum, which is expensive and scarce, to assist the reaction...

Officials with battery maker Form Energy have announced the development of the Iron-Air 100-hour storage battery—a battery meant to store electricity created from renewable sources such as solar and wind. As part of their announcement, they note that their new battery is based on iron, not lithium, and thus is much less expensive to produce. The team at Form Energy describe their new battery as a multi-day energy storage system—one that can feed electricity to the grid for approximately 100 hours at a cost that is significantly lower than lithium-ion batteries. The basic idea behind the iron-air battery is that...