WHEN the American space agency chose fuel cells for auxiliary power in their vehicles, non-electrochemists who were in the energy conversion field felt that the investigation of a anacea had been funded. The first fuel-cell decadeabout 1958 to 1968-has passed, and one o P the non-political reasons why the progress in the engineered realization of fuel-cell power has not been as wide as desired is that there has been until recently no book in English on modem electrochemistry or on fuel cells. Now, after ten years of funding, several books on fuel cells have appeared: the comprehensive and electrochemically-oriented book of Vielstich in German; Williams' Introduction; Liebhafsky and Cairns' epic, which includes the work at the General Electric Company; and Hart and Womach's little pocket book. Each of these has a contribution to make-but the standard of the field of fuel-cell book writing has been considerably raised by the publication of the present book of 5 articles edited by Dr. Berger.
The tirst chapter is by Austin, well known to fuel-cell workers as the tirst to publish a rational theory of processes of porous electrodes. It concerns basic electrode kinetics, oriented towards the fuel-cell man. The second is by Srinivasan and Gileadi, two fundamental electrochemists who have applied their broad knowledge to describe the concepts associated with the research in the basic electrochemistry that underlies the action in a fuel cell. The third and fourth chapters by Kordesch and Maget deal with low temperature, carbon-containing cells, and the ion-exchange-membrane cells, respectively. The chapter, by Verstraete, Lefevre, Laforte and Henry, members of the strong Belgian association for the study of fuel cells, concerns the economic aspects of fuel cells.
Austin's chapter is a lucid presentation of the electrochemical side of fuel-cell theory. The author deals with several aspects in which the literature is lean, for example the rate of release of heat in cells. He does not touch on the quantum-mechanical aspects of electron transfer, but that is the only way in which his chapter is not up to date. For example, it presents the Ten&in kinetics, the theory of changes in rate-determining steps in electrode kinetics etc. full-time researchers in basic electrode kinetics.