Boom in Fuel Cell Research Spells New Future for Alternative Energy
As the lights threaten to go dim in parts of the nation because of an energy shortage, the model for supplying clean and abundant electricity in the 21st century can be found at a Portland sewage plant.
Methane collected from decomposing waste provides hydrogen to power a commercial fuel cell that transforms the volatile gas into enough electricity to light more than 100 homes for a year.
Fuel cells were invented in the 19th century. But most Americans had never heard of them until a faulty one blew a hole in Apollo 13 in 1970, scuttling what would have been the third moon landing and nearly costing three astronauts their lives.
Fuel cells remain an essential part of the space program, reliably powering the space shuttle.
Utilities, investors and government planners are now starting to pay close attention to some down-to-earth uses for a technology that converts the most abundant element in the universe--hydrogen--into electricity and water.
“It’s no longer science fiction,” said Steve Millett, one of the leading researchers in the field. “It’s real.”
Millett works at Battelle, the institute founded by a steel industry family in Columbus, Ohio, which now develops all kinds of technology for industry and the government, including NASA.
Millett says fuel cell technology was transformed during the last decade from a cottage industry into one of the most rapidly expanding high-tech businesses in the world, partly because of the automotive industry’s suddenly keen interest in hybrid electric motors.
“More and more auto companies have awakened to the fact that their sales are dependent on fuel prices,” Millett said, “so the auto companies are investing more in fuel cells and pushing harder than any other industry.”
As 2001 began, it was reported that Exxon Mobil Corp. planned to join Toyota and General Motors in an alliance to develop environmentally friendly fuel cell vehicles. Ford and Daimler-Chrysler also have fuel cell projects in the works.
But as recently as 1996, there was only one major manufacturer of commercial-size fuel cells in the country--ONSI Corp. in Windsor, Conn., a subsidiary of International Fuel Cells.
ONSI built units the size of a minivan to provide electricity to facilities that were too remote from the main power grid or needed reliable backup power, such as hospitals and resorts.
Now dozens of manufacturers and many large companies are considering fuel cell development in an industry that has one of the fastest-growing trade associations in the country--the U.S. Fuel Cell Council in Washington, D.C.
“There are a lot of big names in the business now,” said Bob Rose, the council’s executive director. “General Electric is in, along with 3M, DuPont, United Technologies.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, utilities were interested in building big fuel cell plants capable of producing one to three megawatts as part of a central power supply. But the long-range goals have shifted to a smaller scale: putting a washing machine-sized fuel cell in every home, or smaller units in every car and truck. And that’s attracted a broader range of companies and investors, Rose said.
Motorola, for example, is working with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to miniaturize fuel cells for hand-held electronic devices like cell phones.
Mark Williams, fuel cell product manager at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, W.Va., said the U.S. Department of Energy--the lab’s parent agency--has been funding fuel cell research across the country for years. But now initial public offerings of stock in various technology development companies are spurring investment interest, along with research funding by established companies.
“The alliance of auto manufacturers, fuel cell developers, utilities, universities--there’s a whole new initiative that’s bringing it together,” Williams said.
At the Portland sewage treatment plant, on the peninsula formed by the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, the city is generating electricity from only the third commercial fuel cell of its kind in the nation to use waste “biogas.”
The fuel cell began operating in July 1999. It’s such a success that the Environmental Protection Agency gave the city a “clean air excellence” award for converting waste gas from sewage into 200 kilowatts of electricity.
David Tooze, energy program manager for Portland, said the city needed to pull together several grants to cover the $1.3-million cost of the fuel cell. But it has proved to be more than worth the investment by producing electricity at 8 cents per kilowatt hour, at a time when the deregulated spot market easily pushes the price to 20 cents per kilowatt hour.
Fuel cells are an extremely clean source of power because they combine hydrogen and oxygen--the two elements that make up water, the main byproduct.
“A lot of long-term energy planners recognize fuel cells could be one of the major links that bridge us from a society that operates on fossil fuels and their pollution liability, to an energy economy that operates on hydrogen, which is essentially clean-burning,” Tooze said.
Much of the fuel cell pioneering work is taking place in the Pacific Northwest. A public power consortium of 13 utilities called Energy Northwest is taking part in a Bonneville Power Administration test of fuel cells made by a company founded in the central Oregon town of Bend.
Bonneville officials see fuel cell technology as a way to redistribute the power grid on a more local level. The Portland-based federal power marketing agency already oversees one of the cleanest energy sources in the nation, the string of 29 hydroelectric dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers.
But salmon conservation and increasing power demand have forced the BPA to search for alternate sources of electricity. Fuel cells could be a way to take the load off the central power grid and create a system of residential generators that could power homes and even provide a surplus to the grid.
But fuel cells are still too expensive.
For example, a Boise-based company called Idacorp has joined the BPA to test fuels cells for home use that are in the $25,000 range. The company hopes the cost per unit eventually will drop to the $5,000 to $7,000 range.
Still, fuel cell development is becoming part of a nationwide shift away from reliance on any single power source.
“It’s going to take time, and it’s not effortless, but the move toward the so-called hydrogen economy has started,” said Millett, the Battelle researcher. “We’ve taken the baby steps.”
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Battelle: https://www.battelle.org
Bonneville Power Administration: https://www.bpa.gov
U.S. Fuel Cell Council: https://www.usfcc.com
National Energy Technology Laboratory: https://www.fetc.doe.gov
