{"id":215027,"date":"2025-05-29T22:04:33","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T03:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/prototype-sodium-air-fuel-cell-could-power-electric-planes-and-trains"},"modified":"2025-05-29T22:04:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T03:04:33","slug":"prototype-sodium-air-fuel-cell-could-power-electric-planes-and-trains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/prototype-sodium-air-fuel-cell-could-power-electric-planes-and-trains","title":{"rendered":"Prototype sodium-air fuel cell could power electric planes and trains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/prototype-sodium-air-fuel-cell-could-power-electric-planes-and-trains2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Batteries are nearing their limits in terms of how much power they can store for a given weight. That\u2019s a serious obstacle for energy innovation and the search for new ways to power airplanes, trains, and ships. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a solution that could help electrify these transportation systems.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of a battery, the new concept is a kind of fuel cell which is similar to a battery but can be quickly refueled rather than recharged. In this case, the fuel is liquid sodium metal, an inexpensive and widely available commodity.<\/p>\n<p>The other side of the cell is just ordinary air, which serves as a source of oxygen atoms. In between, a layer of solid ceramic material serves as the electrolyte, allowing sodium ions to pass freely through, and a porous air-facing electrode helps the sodium to chemically react with oxygen and produce electricity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Batteries are nearing their limits in terms of how much power they can store for a given weight. That\u2019s a serious obstacle for energy innovation and the search for new ways to power airplanes, trains, and ships. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a solution that could help electrify these transportation [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,48,17,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-particle-physics","category-sustainability","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}