Fuel cells are all the rage lately. Untold billions of dollars have been and are being spent to developed them. They are an integral component of the hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is the fuel which supplies the heat energy to the fuel cells. The fuel cells then convert this heat energy to electric energy.

Many organizations such as newspapers reporters and religious groups think that fuel cells produce energy by themselves. They do not. And they are not part of the renewable chain unless the hydrogen is produce by a renewable device such as wind or solar power. Due to the dilute low energy production of renewable devices, it is highly unlikely that they will ever be a significant contributor to the hydrogen supply cycle.

As to where the hydrogen comes from to supply fuel cells, go to my Web page under Hydrogen. Hydrogen does not exist in nature in a free state. It is tied up in molecules such as water. It takes more energy to break up water to get hydrogen than the hydrogen gives back. But it is a way to transfer nuclear generated electrical energy to produce hydrogen to energize fuel cells and or internal combustion engines. I think that some day in the distant future we will have to do this if we want to drive autos. Oil is a finite fuel.

Fuel cells are sought after because they can produce electricity to power transportation vehicles and are totally nonpolluting. The exhaust product is only water. And fuel cells are a little more efficient than (I C) internal combustion engines.

Fuel Cell development is again underway for the umpteenth time. Don't hold your breath

New demand for distributed power generation and clean energy are causing a renaissance in fuel cells. Government agencies and other groups are funding a variety of efforts to make fuel cells more efficient and to bring the cost per kilowatt to produce electricity down to levels that are on a par with other generation technologies.

And while not directly related to the electric utility industry, there are many government and automotive industry efforts under way to improve fuel cells for use in hybrid and clean-fuel cars. Any developments or breakthroughs from these projects potentially could be applied to fuel cells used by power companies.

The main driver for the sudden new interest in fuel cells is to meet the demands for clean, renewable energy. In October, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded $100 million to fund 25 hydrogen fuel cell research and development projects that have applications in both the electrical utilities and automotive fields

Fuel cells are very expensive as of this writing. The cost of a fuel ceil stack is about $5,000 per kWe or $3,748 per horse power. Thus a 150 horse power auto engine alone would cost $562,200 and a 250 horse powered mini van engine or truck engine would cost $937,000. The cost of fuel cells would have to come down a factor of 100 to be competitive. +

At a meeting I attended held by the California Energy Commission on may 31. 2006, I learned that the target fuel cell cost is $75 per kWe. Ballard Power Systems thought that they may some day reach that value if they produce 500,000 fuel cells continually.

But of greater concern is the durability of fuel cells. It was stated that fuel cells have a longer lifetime if they are operated at constant power levels. For vehicle use this is not possible. Ballard thinks that fuel cell stack life times are about 500 to 2,000 hours for this type of duty cycle. This could mean a very expensive new stack replacement every 25,000 to 50,000 miles of use.

During a fuel cell auto demonstration by General Motors in Europe, a 6,000 mile trip required a fuel stack replacement in 3,000 miles.

There are many types of fuel cells, but just two are of interest here. They are:

The PEM fuel cells are slated for automotive engines because they operate at about room temperatures. The SOFC are expected to power central station power plants. They operate at elevated temperatures of about 2,000 F and as such would take too long and to much energy to get up to temperature to start in automotive use.

A fuel cell stack is made up of thousands of individual fuels cells A 10 kWe fuel cell system I worked on had 20,000 individual fuel cells. Each cell is made up of a sandwich of inner and outer membranes with an electrolyte in between. Hydrogen flows on one side and oxygen the other. As hydrogen atoms diffuse through the inner membrane a thin layer of platinum acts as a catalyst and strips off an electron. The hydrogen atom thus becomes a proton and goes through the electrolyte and then diffuses through the outer membrane which also has a platinum layer catalyst.

Only a hydrogen ion will pass through the electrolyte. The stripped off electron at the Anode travels through the eternal power circuit and combines with the oxygen at the cathode membrane. When the hydrogen and oxygen atoms combine at the cathode the heat of the reaction energizes the fuel cell. Thus the fuel cell needs energy to operate. It is not a perpetual motion device. Some people such as the some religious organizations as well as some environmentalists think it is.

Did you pick up on the fact that the anode and cathode membranes each have a layer of platinum as the catalyst to aid the reaction? Platinum is one of the most expensive elements known. Even more so than gold. Thus platinum contributes to the high capital cost of the fuel cell. In fact there probably is not enough platinum in the world to use for all the fuel cells that would be needed. Nothing seems to work as well as the catalyst other than platinum. So the capital cost of fuel cells is at a stand still. It is also expensive to have to make so many little fuel cells for a stack large enough for an auto engine.

The San Jose Mercury News ran an article about a company in Silicon Valley that has supposedly developed a real breakthrough in the fuel cell membrane material. They think this will really bring down the cost of fuel cells. Typical Newspaper article. The platinum catalysis is still needed as well as thousands of fuel cells per stack. As usual I don't think we will ever hear whether this breakthrough succeeds or not. A few years ago the city of Santa Clara had a two megawatt fuel cell central station system installed. This is a hugh power capacity for a fuel cell installation. The Mercury News touted this as the beginning of a new energy source. The facility operated for a few months, failed, and shutdown for good. The Mercury News never reported what happened.

Here is an outfit that likes fuels cells. But entirely lacking is where does the hydrogen come from to fuel the fuel cells? Moreover, they have no idea about the high capital cost of fuel cells.

Within the U.S., Schoenwald likes FuelCell Energy Inc. and Plug Power Inc., both of which use on-site fuel cells to produce energy for manufacturing plants, hotels, prisons and universities.

Achievement Brightens Prospects for Environmentally Clean Technology to Move into Mainstream Energy Markets Squeezing more watts of electric power from smaller and smaller volumes of fuel cell materials is one of the "holy grails" of fuel cell developers.

Combined with advances in mass production, such improvements in a fuel cell’s "power density" could provide one of the much needed technological leaps that could make this environmentally attractive technology economically competitive with today’s traditional ways of generating electricity. Now Delphi Corp., a partner in the U.S. Department of Energy’s advanced fuel cell development program, has reported that it has exceeded the power density level required to meet the government’s $400 per kilowatt cost goal for fuel cells. Meeting the cost target is essential if fuel cells are to expand beyond their current niche markets into widespread commercial use.

My comment: A goal of $400 per kWe cost of fuel cells makes them competitive with current auto engines? A 100 horsepower engine would cost $30,000 for the engine along. And where does the hydrogen fuel come from? Read on.

The distributed power generation systems are being designed to use natural gas as the primary fuel (which would be steam reformed to generate the hydrogen used by the fuel cell), while the automotive auxiliary power unit incorporates a catalytic fuel rich partial oxidation system to extract hydrogen from gasoline.

Hydrogen from natural gas is ridiculous since natural gas supply is being stretched to supply the current electrical and home heating loads. See my Web page on Natural Gas. And gasoline for hydrogen? They refine oil to gasoline then split it up to extract the hydrogen? Gasoline is about 86% carbon and 15% hydrogen. Looks to me like a bad idea.

Fuel Cells 2000 Unveils Searchable Database of Worldwide Stationary Installations

WASHINGTON, Nov 15, 2005 -- BUSINESS WIRE

The world is at your fingertips. The world of stationary fuel cell installations, that is. Fuel Cells 2000 has developed the first-of-its-kind searchable database of worldwide stationary fuel cell installations. The database catalogues all installations around the globe - past, present and planned. And like every resource available on www.fuelcells.org, it is absolutely free.

The easy-to-use MySQL database allows users to search by a variety of fields to find exactly what they are looking for. There are basic search fields as well as an advanced search feature that allows multiple sorting by manufacturer, city, state, country, fuel cell type, power range, fuel, demonstration program, and by specific text. Users can find all PEM fuel cells in their state or country, look up all natural gas-fueled units, search for units under or over a certain power range - the options are endless.

"Fuel Cells 2000 has compiled all the information available and created a simple, yet comprehensive database of stationary fuel cell installations," says Jennifer Gangi, program director, Fuel Cells 2000. "We hope users will be impressed with not only how many installations there are worldwide, but at just how long some countries have been actively working on demonstrating the technology." The database contains numerous listings from various fuel cell demonstration programs conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense, European Union and Japan from the 1990s as well as more recent installations and planned sitings' coming up in the next few years.

The database can be found at http://www.fuelcells.org/info/databasefront.html. Fuel Cells 2000 welcomes any additions or corrections, including technical data and photographs, particularly with older or recently installed units. Please email information to database@fuelcells.org.

Fuel cells generate electricity without combustion by harnessing the energy created when hydrogen and oxygen are chemically combined. Fuel Cells 2000 is an independent, nonprofit activity dedicated to the commercialization of fuel cell technologies.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 includes the first tax incentive for fuel cell power plants at the Federal level. To qualify, a fuel cell facility must be an integrated system comprised of a fuel cell stack assembly and associated balance of plant components that convert a fuel into electricity using electrochemical means, and which has an electricity-only generation efficiency of greater than 30 percent and generates at least 0.5 megawatts of electricity, and which is placed in service after December 31, 2005, and before January 1, 2009. The taxpayer can claim the 1.5 cents-per-kilowatt-hour (indexed for inflation) credit for a five-year period commencing on the date the facility is placed in service.

We can hope that the DOE Integrated nuclear power plant Hydrogen/electric systems programs can be given the support that is currently being given to development of fuel cells. Developing fuel cells first is putting the cart before the horse. Without hydrogen, fuel cells are worthless. Moreover, if fuel cells continue to be too expensive, I C engines can be used to power transportation vehicles and can be ready within a year from now at one hundredth of the current capital cost of fuel cells.