NEWS

May 2005 Fuel Cells Bulletin5

Concurrent Technologies Corporation.The hydrogen generation system wasdesigned and developed by Millenniumunder a CTC subcontract last October.

CTC has been contracted by the DoD todevelop Common Core Power Production(C2P2) technology for the Air Force’s AdvancedPower Technology Office, by utilizing fuel cellsystems as interchangeable power sources formilitary equipment. The systems developed byMillennium Cell under this award are designedto mix solid fuel pellets (sodium borohydride)into a fuel solution to produce hydrogen on-demand to power stationary fuel cells for mili-tary and industrial applications.

Contact: Millennium Cell Inc, Eatontown, New Jersey,USA. Tel: +1 732 542 4000, www.millenniumcell.com

Or contact: Fuel Cell Test & Evaluation Center,Concurrent Technologies Corporation, Johnstown,Pennsylvania, USA. Tel: +1 814 269 2721,www.fctec.com

Fuel cell bus funding inUS transportation bill

The US Congress has voted to provide$65m in fuel cell bus funding within

a major piece of transportation legisla-tion, the Transportation Equity Act(TEA). The funding will support R&Dinto technologies that will make fuelcell buses commercially viable.

Section 3039 of the six-year, $284bn TEAbill provides for the establishment of a nationalfuel cell bus technology program. The Depart-ment of Transportation (DoT) will enter intopartnerships with up to three geographicallydiverse organizations to conduct fuel cell bustechnology and infrastructure projects. The$65m funding will be spread over six years andprovided to the partners on a cost-share basis,with the DoT co-funding research up to 50%.

One partner will be the National Fuel CellBus Technology Initiative (NFCBTI), launchedin late 2003 [FCB, January 2004]. Led by trans-portation technologies consortium WestStart-CALSTART, the NFCBTI is a collaboration oftechnology companies and transit operatorswhich has proposed a six-year, $150m effort totackle fuel cell development and infrastructure.

In contrast to the European fuel cell bus pro-gram focus on technology demonstration andtesting, the US program will focus more on tech-nical challenges preventing commercial viability.

Contact: WestStart-Calstart, Pasadena, California,USA. Tel: +1 626 744 5600, www.weststart.org

For more on the NFCBTI program, go to:www.calstart.org/programs/FuelCell/NFCBTI_backgrounder.pdf

Hitachi Maxell reducesPtRu catalyst size byadding phosphorus

In Japan, Hitachi Maxell has developeda new technology which reduces the

size of PtRu catalyst for use in fuel cellsto 2 nm, and also improves catalyst dis-persion through the addition of phos-phorus. The smaller catalyst particlesmean reduced activation energy andincreased speed of the reaction.

Maxell’s new technology reduces the PtRucatalyst to 2 nm by the addition of non-metallicphosphorus, based on known electroplatingtechnology. Phosphorus has high binding ener-gies with Pt and Ru, so adding phosphorus ter-minates the metallic bonds of Pt and Ru, result-ing in a reduction in the size of the PtRu cata-lyst. The size of PtRuP catalyst remains at 2 nm,regardless of the specific surface area of the car-bon supports, improving catalyst utilizationwhile maintaining high catalytic activity.

Another characteristic of the PtRuP catalystis its sharply defined size distribution. In con-ventional catalyst synthesis, the size distributiontends to be wide, i.e. between 2 and 10 nm.However, adding phosphorus suppresses thesize dispersion, and PtRuP catalyst with a sizedistribution of 2.0 ± 0.5 nm can be obtained.

The maximum power density of a directmethanol fuel cell using conventional PtRu cat-alyst is about 38 mW/cm2, whereas a maxi-mum power density of 64 mW/cm2 has beenachieved using the new PtRuP catalyst.

Contact: Hitachi Maxell Ltd, Development & Technol-ogy Division, Tsukuba-gun, Ibaraki, Japan. Tel: +81 297205111, www.maxell.co.jp or www.maxell.com

FCE power plant forConnecticut bakery

Connecticut-based FuelCell Energyand its distribution partner PPL

EnergyPlus are providing a 250 kWeDirect FuelCell® power plant forPepperidge Farm’s Bloomfield bakeryfacility, also in Connecticut. Delivery isexpected in the third quarter of 2005.

The DFC300A unit is expected to provideabout 20% of the bakery’s base-load power, withby-product heat used to provide process steamfor the bakery. PPL will own the unit and sellthe electricity and heat to Pepperidge Farmunder a power purchase agreement. FCE willprovide maintenance under its long-term master

service agreement with PPL. The plant is a com-bined effort using FCE’s carbonate technologyand the Hot Module® balance-of-plant design ofits German partner, MTU CFC Solutions.

Pepperidge Farm is the seventh DFC300Apower plant customer for the PPL/FCE alliancein less than three years.

Contact: FuelCell Energy Inc, Danbury, Connecticut,USA. Tel: +1 203 825 6000, www.fuelcellenergy.com orwww.fce.com

Or contact: PPL Energy Services, Allentown,Pennsylvania, USA. Tel: +1 610 774 6866, www.pplen-ergyplus.com

Or contact: Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, RockyHill, Connecticut, USA. Tel: +1 860 563 0015,www.ctcleanenergy.com

QuestAir purifierinstalled at Hyundai H2 station in California

An H-3200 hydrogen purifier fromQuestAir Technologies has been

installed at the ChevronTexaco hydro-gen energy station recently opened atHyundai-Kia’s America Technical Centerin Chino, California [FCB, April].

The H-3200 purifies hydrogen produced on-site from natural gas using proprietary small-scale hydrogen production technology devel-oped by ChevronTexaco Technology Ventures.The purified hydrogen is then used to fuel atest fleet of five Hyundai/Kia FCEVs.

QuestAir was also recently contracted to sup-ply an H-3200 purifier for a second CalifornianChevronTexaco hydrogen station being built forAC Transit in Oakland [FCB, April]. In total,ChevronTexaco will build up to six hydrogenstations in California under DOE’s ‘ControlledHydrogen Fleet and Infrastructure Demon-stration and Validation Program’.

Contact: QuestAir Technologies Inc, Burnaby, BC,Canada. Tel: +1 604 454 1134, www.questairinc.com

Or contact: ChevronTexaco Technology Ventures,Houston, Texas, USA. Tel: +1 713 954 6257,www.chevrontexaco.com/technologyventures

Researchers develop minimembrane-less fuel cell

Aminiature fuel cell designed byresearchers at the University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign relies onfluid flow behavior rather than a physi-cal barrier to separate fuel and oxidant.