First, an explanation of the phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) is necessary. The PAFC is the most mature fuel cell technology in terms of development and commercialization. It has been under development for more than 20 years, with more than $500 million dollars spent worldwide in the development and demonstration. This is the state of the art technology in a chemical fuel cell.

You may already know that hydrogen gas is extremely flammable, but did you know that hydrogen can combust chemically—without a flame—much like we “burn” fuel in our bodies?

Unlike hydrogen-powered generators that need an internal combustion engine in order to generate electricity, the PAFC produces electricity from hydrogen without an internal combustion engine. There are no moving parts.

The PAFC uses liquid phosphoric acid as the electrolyte. Simply stated, an electrolyte is a non-metallic substance that conducts electricity. In order to get the electricity out of the cell, the anode and cathode—positive and negative terminals—are constructed of platinum-catalyzed porous carbon. Think of these as the terminals on your car battery. The porous matrix of the terminals holds the electrolyte in place between the terminals. On one side of the cell (see diagram) bottled hydrogen is pumped in onto the backside of the anode. On the backside of the cathode, air is added to the cell. At the anode, the hydrogen gas is split into two hydrogen ions (H⁺) and two electrons. The hydrogen ions pass through the electrolyte to the cathode. The electrons are passed out of the anode to the external circuit. When the electrons return to the cathode (negative terminal), they combine with the hydrogen and oxygen to form water, which is removed from the upper portion of the cell. This is shown in the diagram.

In the next step, without going further into a complicated chemical description, hydrogen and oxygen gases are added to the cell. A chemical reaction takes place and electricity is produced. The byproduct of this reaction is water. There are small amounts of heat generated, similar to how our bodies produce heat. These cells have an efficiency of from 36 to 42 percent, with a generating capacity of 160 watts per square foot of active cell area.

To sum up, this is a clean, safe, quiet method of generating electricity using hydrogen in the bottled gas form.

Next, let’s discuss how algae can be used to produce hydrogen. Through a process called “biophotolysis” (breaking or splitting, utilizing an organism and light), green algae can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. There are two organisms required for this reaction: the green algae species Chlamydomonas MGA 161 and the photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodovulum sulfidophilum W-1S. Chlamydomonas MGA 161, when allowed to ferment, produces carbohydrate organics. Under anaerobic (without the presence of oxygen) conditions and in the presence of argon gas, the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodovulum sulfidophilum W-1S converts the organic carbohydrates to hydrogen. This experiment has been successfully performed in the laboratory at the Kansai Electric Power Company in Japan. Used on a large scale, this process is capable of producing millions of cubic feet of hydrogen gas, some of which can be directly converted to electricity using the fuel cell described above, and the rest stored in bottles for future use. Hydrogen is an absolutely clean fuel, the only waste being pure water.

As you can see, the entire process is a self-contained operation requiring very little in the manner of raw materials. It is self-powered and sustainable.

Each year we spend quite a bit of money for energy. In the United States, on average, each man, woman, and child uses more than 11,500 kilowatts of electricity. By contrast, the average per capita consumption of electricity in the African countries of Chad and Cameroon is 16 kilowatts. The average home in America has a roof area of approximately 125 square meters. Each day, the sun provides an average of 384 kilowatts of energy onto this surface. During one year this amounts to 140,060 kilowatts—about 12 times the energy the average person uses in the United States, and almost 8000 times more than the amount used by each person in Chad and Cameroon. All this energy is only from the roof! Most American homes are on at least a quarter of an acre (1,100 sq. meters). If a similar sized space were utilized for solar energy gain, it would provide almost 60 times more energy than the present U.S. per capita consumption. The point here is that it is possible—on one’s own property—to produce enough hydrogen gas from algae to power your entire home. Think what could be done in developing countries with algae to improve the standard of living! Not only do certain species of algae provide high quality nutrition, others can capture the sun’s energy and turn it into usable fuels.

There is much to be gained from positive change, and as always, there is resistance to change. In this case, the resistance to change appears to be from the seemingly immovable conglomerate called the world energy producers. What can be done to create positive change? Each person can begin acting individually, then join to create small associations, then larger ones—until entire communities have alternative energy sources working for them. These sources are clean, sustainable, and in the long term, inexpensive.