Stuart Energy Systems has delivered and commissioned a fuel appliance for the NRC National Fuel Cell Technology Centre in Vancouver. The unit employs the company’s double electrode plate water electrolysis technology to generate high purity hydrogen and oxygen. It will be used for fuel cell research.
The system delivered to the centre delivers up to 20 m3 of hydrogen each hour and 10 m3 of oxygen. The Vancouver centre is one of three key NRC National Fuel Cell Program projects.
In California, meanwhile, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have reported a new fuel cell design which they believe may be cheaper to manufacture than some existing types. The cell is based on a sandwich of caesium hydrogen sulphate and a platinum catalyst. It runs at a higher temperature than a phosphoric acid cell but lower than a molten salt cell.
The operational temperature offers the prospect of taking advantage of high temperature gains in efficiency without running into the corrosion problems associated with molten salt cells. The new cell is a solid cell, and the researchers have classified it as a dry cell. It appears to offer fabrication advantages by simplifying the design of the fuel cell, making mass production easier.
The new cell has only operated for short periods and technical questions have to be answered before the system can be commercialised. These include the possibility of accidental overheating melting the sandwich or its dissolution if it becomes wet when the system cools down.