FuelCellsWorks

MEDWAY, Mass.–The Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition congratulates ElectroChem, Inc., Woburn, MA for celebrating its 25^th year as a leading manufacturer and exporter of fuel cell equipment ranging from fuel cell test stations to custom fuel cell materials for the fuel cell researcher.

Current research at ElectroChem includes the development its ECcell™ fuel cell energy storage system; and its HHR™ Home Hydrogen Refueler system. ElectroChem is the recipient of awards from NASA, DOE and EPRI. Recent research contract awards include development of Nano-composite membrane for high pressure hydrogen generation for NASA, development of Dead-ended, completely passive PEMFC stack for various applications including operation in zero gravity also for NASA and EPRI funded development of ElectroChem’s highly efficient, low cost Home Hydrogen Refueler (HHR™).

ElectroChem is also the home of www.fuelcell.com, which has over 300 product offerings being sold to researchers worldwide. Many of the products are manufactured with the company’s proprietary technologies.

Charles Myers, President & Board Member of the Coalition noted that “ElectroChem has demonstrated real staying power in the alternative energy fuel cell marketplace by always offering cutting edge technology products. We want to congratulate Dr. Radha Jalan, President and CEO of ElectroChem, on reaching this milestone.”

ElectroChem, Inc.’s President and CEO, Radha Jalan, Ph.D., received her MA from the University of Calcutta, India and her doctorate from the University of Florida, Gainesville. She is a winner of such awards as the MA High Tech Energy Star and Asian Business Woman of the Year. “ElectroChem, Inc. continues to see significant interest in our fuel cell and hydrogen technologies from both domestic and international research institutions,” said Dr. Jalan.

About Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition:

Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition represents the fuel cell and hydrogen industry in Massachusetts. The Coalition works to accelerate the success of Massachusetts companies and organizations developing and deploying these technologies, and to significantly increase the scale and scope of hydrogen and fuel cell related activities in Massachusetts.

About ElectroChem, Inc.:

ElectroChem is a pioneering company; bringing predictable high quality fuel cell research to the marketplace as a comprehensive product line. FuelCell.com is ElectroChem’s flagship subsidiary, allowing ElectroChem to create a convenient platform for developers to acquire products they need. ElectroChem is also an owner of many patents, which serve as a testament to ElectroChem’s innovative capabilities.

Image: the core-shell particle (palladium atoms on a silver nanoparticle).

Pete Wilton

By Dana Hull

Brad Fields, 39, spent most of his adult career working in production at NUMMI, the Fremont auto plant that shut down a year ago.

Now Fields is production manager at Bloom Energy, the Sunnyvale fuel-cell company that has a bold mission: to make clean, reliable energy affordable to everyone in the world.

“When NUMMI closed, I had a couple of different options. I could have worked at another auto plant, or another Toyota facility,” Fields said in an interview. “But I chose to work at Bloom because this is a green job. We are creating the future of Bloom manufacturing, and to be on the ground floor of a new company — it’s just really exciting.”

Bloom Energy has been relatively quiet since it first lifted the curtain on its fuel-cell technology at a highly orchestrated news conference in February 2010. But in the year since the company’s official launch, Bloom has added customers, more than doubled its staff to 714 full-time employees, and torn down cubicles as it expands its manufacturing footprint to 200,000 square feet. More than 20 former NUMMI employees have found manufacturing jobs at Bloom, and the company currently has 45 job openings, according to the company.

This week, it announced another: the operator of the public ice rink where the San Jose Sharks practice.

Sharks Ice at San Jose, at South 10th Street and Alma Avenue, is the largest rink facility west of the Mississippi River. Keeping its ice cold generates a monthly electric bill of $65,000, according to rink spokesman Jim Sparaco.

“For hockey, the ice temperature is 19 degrees and for figure skating, it’s 22 degrees,” he said. “We use a lot of electricity, and the Bloom Boxes can be in use 24 hours a day.”

The three Bloom Energy Servers to be installed by the end of the year will power four NHL-size ice rinks, as well as administrative offices, an equipment store and Stanley’s Sports Bar and Restaurant. The Bloom Boxes are expected to generate about 85 percent of the facility’s electric needs.

Fuel cells use hydrogen, natural gas, methane or other fuels to generate electricity through an electrochemical process that produces a fraction of the emissions of a typical power plant. For decades, researchers have tried to perfect solid oxide fuel cells, which operate at temperatures above 800 degrees Celsius and can use fuels other than hydrogen. Bloom Energy says it has solved many solid oxide engineering challenges and that its devices can recycle the waste heat to produce more electricity.

Each Bloom Energy Server — commonly known as Bloom Boxes — provides 100 kilowatts of power, enough to meet the energy needs of a small office building. Within each device are thousands of fuel cells that are sandwiched into stacks. Each energy server contains 64 stacks of fuel cells.

In its early days, Bloom Energy was able to make just one energy server a month. Now it’s making one a day.

Gary Workman, who spent 15 years at NUMMI before joining Bloom as its vice president of quality, said NUMMI workers were qualified for the new jobs partly because they were trained in the principals of “lean manufacturing,” which refers to eliminating waste and putting quality controls in place.

“When you’ve been trained on mass production there’s a real mind-set and a skill set,” Workman said. “Everyone has a real sense of purpose.”

To date, Bloom has shipped 120 energy servers, nearly all of them to customers in California. That commits the company to manufacturing in the state, Workman said, because each server weighs 10 tons and the cost of shipping them from another state or from overseas would be high.

“It makes sense to build them where we sell them,” he said “Our largest installations are at Adobe and Caltech, and we’ve got a healthy backlog of orders.”

LAUSANNE, Switzerland– Researchers in Switzerland say a chance discovery may revolutionize hydrogen production by making it more cost-effective.

Water, composed of hydrogen and oxygen, can be broken down and hydrogen gas produced by applying an electrical current in a process known as electrolysis, a particularly slow reaction that can be made more efficient using platinum as a catalyst.

However, platinum is a particularly expensive material that has tripled in price during the last decade, a release from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne said Thursday.

EPFL scientists have discovered that amorphous molybdenum sulphides, which are abundant and inexpensive, are efficient catalysts in electrolysis and hydrogen production cost can be significantly lowered.

The catalysts are stable and compatible with acidic, neutral or basic conditions in water, while allowing faster hydrogen production than other catalysts of the same price, the researchers said.

EPFL researchers made the unexpected discovery during an electrochemical experiment intended to produce a different result.

“It’s a perfect illustration of the famous serendipity principle in fundamental research,” researcher Xile Hu said. “Thanks to this unexpected result, we’ve revealed a unique phenomenon.”