Fuel Cell Store Blog

An Associated Press sports writer checks in on the Green Grand Prix held at the famed race course at Watkins Glen. The Green Grand Prix is “the only road rally for alternate-fuel vehicles and hybrids in the United States,” and is sponsored by the Sports Car Club of America. This one featured many different kinds of vehicles, including Robert Beam’s 1988 Isuzu Trooper was powered by wood chips

“We were going to have a wood-powered, supercharged Mercury Cougar XR-7 in it this year, but it’s not ready,” said Beam, whose nickname is, yes, “Chip.”

As the price of gas continues to climb toward $4 a gallon, the event attracted a record field of 46 cars - hybrid and flexible-fuel vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell cars, as well as some powered by biodiesel, electricity, liquid propane, compressed natural gas, even vegetable oil.

The goal: to preach energy independence, reduce greenhouse gases and educate the public about alternative fuels. It doesn’t hurt to have a good time doing it at the place road racing came of age in America 60 years ago.

The rally is the brainchild of Bob Gillespie, a retired art teacher and lifelong car aficionado. “There are more people buying hybrid cars and they’re excited about them, but they didn’t have a way to celebrate the technology,” said Gillespie, who drives a 2005 Toyota Prius with 82,000 miles on it. “I was thinking these people deserve a sporting event of their own. So many people think these cars are efficient, but they’re not fun to drive.”

A biodiesel was the winner, as determined by fuel efficiency not speed or distance. But

Growth plans for electronics giant Toshiba include “a biomethanol fuel-cell solution for mobile phones,” reports PC Magazine. But, says the magazine, “Whether it would develop such a cell itself was not known, and the company gave no timetable for shipping products.”

Apparently the editors at PC Magazine don’t use Google much. Toshiba exhibited its new Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The fuel cell is designed to work for mobile devices, running on methanol which can be refueled on the go. The fuel cell was developed at Toshiba’s Micro Fuel Cell Development Center, as reported by … PC Magazine in January.

Fuel cell maker Plug Power “has become ensnared in the student loan crisis, with almost half of its investment portfolio tied up in bonds investors are reluctant to touch,” reports the Daily Gazette in Albany, N.Y. Plug Power has $62.9 million invested in auction rate securities (ARS) backed by federally guaranteed student loans, Plug is suing UBS, the New Jersey investment adviser that allegedly made those investments in January, one month before the $300 billion ARS market dried up.  Some 44 percent of Plug’s investment portfolio are in 18 separate in ARS backed by student loans. The newspaper story has the details of the financial aspects of the story.

“There is no immediate concern, but it’s something we want to take care of quickly,” said Plug spokesman Eoin Connolly. Plug manufactures devices that use hydrogen to make electricity. The company’s most recent product-related news was its announcement that it would participate in this year’s Hannover Fair in Germany, billed as the world’s largest showcase of industrial technology. At the 2007 show, which attracted more than 240,000 attendees. Plug Power officially unveiled its newest high-temperature proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system prototype. When that advanced cogeneration system is made available commercially, it is expected to be capable of meeting the full heating and comfort needs of a typical home while providing home owners savings on annual utility bills and reducing the carbon footprint of the home. The system has been designed to operate equally well with hydronic and forced air heating systems.

Canada’s National Post reports on Ford Motor Co.’s planned progression to producing fuel-cell vehicles for the mass market.

Ford has laid out its plan to ensure a sustainable transportation future and a cleaner environment. The plan involves three steps. The near-term runs from now to 2012, the mid-term extends to 2020 and the long-term takes care of 2020 and beyond. It is an all-encompassing vision that touches all emerging technologies. Greg Franette, chief engineer for Ford’s fuel cell and hybrid vehicle programs, said the greening of the company’s fleet would continue despite Ford’s precarious financial position.

In the near term, Ford will begin to roll out its EcoBoost range of four- and six-cylinder engines. The adoption of gasoline direct injection and turbocharging improves fuel economy by 20 per cent or more while dropping carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent without diminishing overall performance.

Next year, Ford will roll out an updated Escape Hybrid with a new 2.5L Atkinson-cycle engine in place of the current 2.3L four and will add a hybrid version of the Fusion.

As early as 2012, Ford will introduce a plug-in version of the Escape Hybrid. Replacing the current 330-volt nickel-metal-hydride battery with a lithium-ion pack and then charging it from the power grid allows the sport-utility vehicle to cover its first 64 kilometres on electric power alone. On a typical drive — most daily commutes are less than 64 km — the environmental impact would be massive.

For the long term, Ford is betting on the fuel cell. The company has 30 Focus fuel cell vehicles in operation in North America. In all, these test mules have amassed more than 1.2 million kilometres without significant problems.

The report includes a brief overview of the current version of Ford’s HySeries Drive, currently being test in a modified version of the company’s small SUV the Edge. The HySeries is a plug-in hybrid that uses a fuel cell in place of a conventional engine.

TechRadar.com has more details on that small fuel cell Sony recently showed off at the Small Fuel Cells 2008 Exhibition in Atlanta.

Exotic molecules like carbon buckyballs may soon become part of our everyday lives if the latest prototype fuel cell from Sony ever makes it to the high street. The six-cell system Sony recently showed at the Small Fuel Cells 2008 exhibition in Atlanta has at its core an electrolyte membrane based on buckminsterfullerenes (to give them their proper name) and a platinum catalyst. While the science probably matters little to the man in the street, what does ring bells is the ability of the latest prototype to generate three times more energy than its 2005 predecessor.

TechRadar says Sony promises that the next iteration of the technology will be small enough to put inside a cell phone.

Wikipedia explains buckyballs.

MTI MicroFuel Cells is fast becoming the leader of the pack in the race to commercialize small fuel cells for the electronics market. The company announced today an agreement with a Japanese optics manufacturer to adapt MTI’s integrated Mobion fuel cell technology for digital cameras:

This agreement will enable MTI Micro and the developer to collaborate in evaluating and adapting MTI Micro’s Mobion® technology for use in various precision imaging applications, including digital cameras. The work under this development agreement has commenced and MTI Micro expects to deliver prototypes later this month.

“MTI Micro’s effort with its second global OEM engagement strengthens the market for direct methanol fuel cell solutions to provide the additional power that new multi-functional consumer devices demand,” said Sara Bradford, Principal Consultant, Energy & Power Systems Group at Frost & Sullivan, an industry research firm. “This announcement solidifies that MTI Micro is gaining momentum in the commercialization of its Mobion® technology.”

Frost & Sullivan says digital cameras are the third largest consumer electronic segment after cellular telephones and laptop computers. MTI Micro has now signed agreements with two global OEMs that operate within two of those three, mobile phones and digital cameras. Peng Lim, Chief Executive Officer of MTI, says the company’s goal is “to make Mobion® a standard power source for powering all types of mobile products.”

Today´s announcement follows the recent final ruling issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation that will permit passengers and crew to carry methanol fuel cell cartridges and fuel cell systems designed for portable electronic devices on board airplanes in carry-on baggage.

CNET News.com notes that, “over the years, MTI Micro has designed products for the industrial and military markets, but as of late, the company has been making a big push on the consumer electronics side, with the hope of replacing lithium ion batteries with miniature methanol-based fuel cells.”

Just last week, MTI debuted a prototype of a fuel cell designed for handheld GPS devices. And MTI already has a fuel cell that snaps onto the bottom of an SLR camera, allowing photographers to continue shooting pictures for twice as long a regular lithium ion battery pack.

Also working on fuel cell technology for consumer electronics: Sony, Samsung, and Motorola.

Additional coverage: Greentech Media

Chemistry PhD candidate José E. Barranco at the University of the Basque Country has developed new materials that enable the manufacture of cheaper and more efficient methanol fuel cells, reports Science Daily.

Methanol fuel cells are an efficient and sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, but they are still not economically viable. … For fuel cells to be a competitive option amongst alternative energies, advances in a number of fields are required, amongst these being the development of new catalysts, i.e. substances that are responsible for accelerating the chemical reaction required for electricity to be produced. It is in here that José E. Barranco’s focused when he presented his PhD thesis, Development of new metallic materials of an amorphous nature for use in direct methanol fuel cells, at the UPV/EHU.

The article looks at the some of the advantages of methanol versus hydrogen as a fuel-cell fuel source.

Sony has created a small fuel-cell device for mobile electronics, a prototype fuel cell small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. That’s it right over there —>

It’s a hybrid device that incorporates a lithium polymer battery, a methanol fuel cell and a control circuit inside a package that’ just 50 by 30 millimeters. Just 10 millileters of methanol can provide enough power to watch 14 hours of movies on a cell phone screen or a Sony PlayStation Portable, Sony says.

Sony showed the new fuel cell at the Small Fuel Cells 2008 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, last week. There’s no word on when it will reach the commercial market. CNET Asia has the story, as does PC Magazine, ExtremeTech.com, Japan’s Tech On!, and SlashGear.com, which says the fuel cell produces 3 watts of power, and comments, “Looks like MTI Micro have some big-name competition in the fuel-cell business.”

We mentioned MTI Micro’s latest announcement in our previous post.

SlashGear gives a little more info about the potential for the Sony fuel cell:

Three Watts is enough to run a mobile phone for fourteen hours on just 10ml of methanol.  This power could either be used to directly run the mobile device, or to recharge its li-ion battery.  In their prototype, shown above, both the fuel-cell and the battery were combined, together with a control board.

Sony claim to be commercializing the fuel-cell, focusing on the mobile device market.  Unlike MTI Micro’s system, the Sony fuel-cell is ‘active’, with a pump to drive the methanol through.

I predict Sony won’t take too long to commercialize it.

Mobion is showcasing a new prototype GPS unit powered by a methanol fuel cell. The GPS prototype, which also can charge USB devices, usies MTI Micro’s proprietary chip architecture to reduce the complexity of the internal construction of the fuel cell making them cheaper to produce. The chip integrates a power module with fluid conditioning allowing the fuel cell to operate in temperatures from 0C to 40C and operate in any humidity levels. The Mobion chip is 100 percent methanol feed based and operates on a passive direct methanol fuel cell technology. MTI Micro says that its Mobion powered GPS unit provides three times the energy of a similar GPS unit using four AA batteries.

MTI Micro claims that its Mobion prototype can operate for weeks before additional methanol must be added, while a typical AA powered GPS device can operate for days before the batteries run down.No word on the expected cost for the device at retail.

Aspect Association, an organization based in Moscow that works with a network of Russian technology companies, has announced plans to work with American company Medis Technologies to develop and mass produce fuel-cell chargers for laptop computers. Goal to bring a product to the marketplace: the end of 2009. Aspect is Russia’s main state contractor for the development of portable fuel cells. The company says it plans to eventually manufacture 10,000 units per month in Russia.