Innovative Patent on H2/O2 Fuel Cell Using Molten Hydride

For some time it has been known that when some molten metal halides are doped with alkali metal hydrides, the molten mixture becomes a hydride (H-) ion conductor. Significant research conducted in late 80’s at General Electric Co. and Stanford University quantitatively confirmed the previous observations. Detailed d.c. polarization and thermodynamic stability measurements with the molten electrolytes showed that a mixture of LiCl + KCl containing about 10 wt% LiH becomes a pure hydride (H-) ion conductor; i.e., the transference number for hydride ions (tH- = ~1.0), between temperatures of ~300 to 450 C.

Based on these observations a novel H2/O2 fuel cell concept was developed.

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