Quote:
Originally Posted by mmartin798
The most common catalyst used in the direct ethanol fuel cell uses platinum. That alone drives up the costs and scarcity of the power source. If we assume that Morrow Industries was a leader in nanotechnology, they could have yield problems on the nanostructured electrocatalysts made from iron, nickle and cobalt. This too would cause a scarcity problem.
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For this kind of application, how much platinum does it need? Right now platinum costs about $31k / kg, and that is not nearly so high to be limiting on something so incredibly useful! Heck, if it used 200kg of the stuff it would still be $6M well spent!
And remember that these things were supposedly in the 1989 loadings, so they had plenty of time afterward to roll some more off the presses!