FuelCell Energy’s EHS system is said to offer a cost-efficient system to separate pure hydrogen from a gas mixture that then can be sold as fuel for hydrogen vehicles or industrial uses.
If successful, the FuelCell Energy project will be able to offer a low-cost solution to the issues of hydrogen production and distribution that prevent the wide-spread availability of hydrogen at refuelling stations.
Unlike conventional mean of separating hydrogen relying on compression, the EHS technology has no moving parts, increasing its reliability and reducing the energy requirement by up to 50%.
A subscale prototype EHS unit developed by FuelCell Energy is already operating at the University of Connecticut Global Fuel Cell Center, funded by a $US600,000 grant from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund.
The prototype is currently producing 1200 litres per hour of pure hydrogen, using a proprietary electrochemical process.
The DoD funding will be used to scale up the prototype by a factor of 25, to be used in conjunction with a sub-megawatt Direct FuelCell power plant in Danbury for testing.
The goal of the EHS research is to lower the costs of hydrogen production, which is currently three to four times as expensive as refining oil into fuel.
If the EHS can reduce the cost of producing hydrogen sufficiently, the process will allow hydrogen to be produced onsite, to power fuel cell power generators or stored for use as fuel by hydrogen powered vehicles, eliminating the need for hydrogen distribution networks.
