Recent advances, unsolved deficiencies, and future perspectives of hydrogen fuel cells in transportation and portable sectors

Considering the prevailing energy crisis and fast economic growth, the demand for clean alternative power sources for applications in stationary, transportation, and the portable sectors is increasing continuously. In this regard, fuel cell (FC) technology has already proved its potency as an alternative power unit for stationary applications, and now it is gearing up to serve in portable and transportation sectors. This literature review demonstrates the current status, technical accomplishments, and future perspectives of the hydrogen FC in both transportation and portable sectors. It highlights the advancement and current status of FC technology in the urban transit system admitting all the major field applications such as land ways, waterways, airways, and railways. It also highlights small power units for military equipment, auxiliary power units (APU), educational kits, and consumer electronics gadgets such as laptops, smartphone, and chargers, etc. Moreover, the major obstacles that restrict the widespread commercialization of FCs such as fuel storage and distribution, proper hydrogen infrastructure, and operational costs are thoroughly discussed. The future perspective and target toward the development of cost-effective stack are also reported here. We believe that it could serve as a valuable resource for the researchers working on the development of FC technology.