Publication date: 09-Feb-2004
Source: Associated Press

The fuel cells were provided by General Motors Corp., which wants to reduce the cost of the technology in order to put the battery-like power producers into vehicles by 2010.

The companies got together because GM needed hydrogen to continue its study of fuel cells - which convert the gas into electricity by passing it over a series of metal plates - and Dow had plenty of it.

Dow approached GM about a deal in October 2002, said George Kehler, a manager with Dow. Last year, the companies announced an agreement to produce $50 million worth of electricity for the Dow plant, located about 55 miles south of Houston.

The agreement, which lasts through 2010, is the largest commercial application of fuel cells and would let Dow expand sources of electricity and cut back on the use of natural gas, Kehler said.

A bundle of 500 fuel cells will generate power for 2 percent of Dow's Freeport plant - enough electricity to power 25,000 homes for a year.

The plant produces thousands of chemicals, including chlorine, of which hydrogen is a byproduct, Kehler said.

A GM spokesman said the use of fuel cells to help run the chemical plant was an important step toward producing cleaner power.

"Fifteen years from now they are going to look back at this event as a turning point," said the GM spokesman, Scott Fosgard. "Fuel cells have been widely thought to be the ultimate solution for automobiles and now they are helping to power up one of the world's largest chemical plants."

The cost of fuel cell technology far exceeds what consumers are currently willing to pay for power, Fosgard said. By learning more about fuel cells and their applications, GM hopes reduce the technology's cost so consumers could have hydrogen-powered vehicles in their driveways by the end of the decade.

The auto industry is one of many interested in fuel cells, which could be used to power everything from buildings to laptop computers, said University of Houston chemistry professor Allan Jacobson.

"They are like batteries, but they have an important difference," he said. "They continue to operate as long as you continue to supply the fuel."

Fuel cells are clean, efficient and modular, Jacobson said.

Mark Wiesner, director of Rice University's Environmental and Energy Systems Institute, said the catch is getting the hydrogen.

Eventually, it may be possible to produce hydrogen from water, but for now it takes fossil fuels to produce hydrogen - resulting in pollution, Wiesner said.

"It all comes down to how you generate the hydrogen," he said.

The first fuel cell was built in 1839 but didn't grab much interest as an electricity generator until the 1960s during NASA's Apollo space program. Fuel cells continue to remain an essential part of the space program.

The diesel engine, invented in 1894, left "no real incentive to pick up fuel cells at that time," Jacobson said.

However, recent pushes to lower pollution and the efficiency of fuel cells has put them back on the table, he said.

"It is just another way to move your car down the road instead of doing that with an engine," said GM's Fosgard. "As a country, we have a lot of reasons to start to move ourselves off of petroleum as fuel."