Stripping down science, the naked scientists.

The Naked Scientists. In the race to find green or renewable sources of energy is firmly on.

The fossil fuels available below the Earth's surface are fixed.

Their availability is depleting at a rapid pace and their combustion is

releasing harmful gases such as carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.

One contender with the potential to win this race for clean energy, particularly in the field of transportation, is hydrogen fuel for a future hydrogen economy,

and one institution spearheading this charge towards a cleaner future

is the University of Birmingham. I'm Mira Senti Lingham and in this special podcast from the

Naked Scientists,

I visit Birmingham to discover how their scientists

are finding ways to produce, store and use hydrogen

to ensure it remains a key player in our future energy.

The Naked Scientists Podcast is powered by UK Fast, the UK's best hosting provider, on the

web at UKfast.co.uk.

The plan for a hydrogen economy involves the increased use of hydrogen as a fuel for transport,

particularly in hydrogen-powered cars.

However, in this context, hydrogen isn't used as a direct energy source, like coal or oil, but is instead used as an energy carrier, and needs to go through a fuel cell in order to produce the electricity needed to power a motor. As Amandia explained

when I met him on campus alongside one of the university's hydrogen cars.

There are six different types of fuel cells and the simplest to explain probably is a so-called

proton exchange membrane fuel cell, PEM fuel cell, which conceptually just joins

hydrogen ions and oxygen ions together to produce water and the electrons are then released around an external circuit which can be using in the application.

The fuel cell is made up for several different layers, the so-called membrane

...