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Fuel cells are an electricity generation method. They oxidize fuels (methane, hydrogen) at low temperature, electrochemically, without combustion—going directly from fuel to electrons.

This would have been simply a natural gas power plant, of a different type.

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I'm really wondering about the air filtering needed for this to work. Gas turbines are already quite sensitive to bigger particles in the air but for the fuel cell membranes, this could be a much harder problem.

I bet you could spin the natural gas in a centrifuge to eliminate larger particles.

I would guess the natural gas is quite purified by that point, but for the fuel cell to work you need to combine it with air (or to be precise, the oxygen in the air) and a lot of it. So for the fuel cell membranes not to clog with dust and gunk they will have to clean in in some way to prevent issues, ideally without to much extra-energy use or expense per unit of air filtered.

How about a HEPA or ULPA filter? These are very mature technology, work extremely well, and are not particularly expensive.

Sure, that would work - but with the massive ammounts of air needed I would assume those would be quickly clogged and unusable.

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