Fuel cell advantages/disadvantages
Some additional advantages of the fuel cells can be summarised as follows:
High efficiency conversion
Fuel cells convert chemical energy directly into electricity without the combustion process. As a result, a fuel cell is not governed by thermodynamic laws, such as the Carnot efficiency associated with heat engines, currently used for power generation.
Fuel cells can achieve high efficiencies in energy conversion terms, especially where the waste heat from the cell is utilised in cogeneration situation.
High power density
A high power density allows fuel cells to be relatively compact source of electric power, beneficial in application with space constraints. In a fuel cell system, the fuel cell itself is nearly dwarfed by other components of the system such as the fuel reformer and power inverter
Quiet operation
Fuel cells, due to their nature of operation, are extremely quiet in operation. This allows fuel cells to be used in residential or built-up areas where the noise pollution is undesirable.
Disadvantage
The only disadvantage of the fuel cells associated with the cost. The two basic reasons are
i) High costs compared to other energy systems technology
ii) Operation requires repleisable fuel supply.