The grant provides funding for the first stage of the 10-year, three- phase Fuel Cell Coal-Based Systems project, which is part of the DOE Office of Fossil Energy's Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance (SECA). Total project funding for this and the other two planned phases is expected to be about $180 million.

The project is aimed at developing solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology that can run on coal gas and be used in highly-efficient central generation power plant facilities.

The goal is to demonstrate an advanced fuel cell-hybrid system with an overall efficiency of at least 50 percent in converting energy contained in coal to grid electrical power. In contrast, current U.S. coal-fired power plants have an electrical efficiency of approximately 35 percent.

In addition, the envisioned SOFC-hybrid system is expected to capture 90 percent or more of the system's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, while being cost-competitive with other baseload power generating technologies.

FuelCell Energy, a fuel cell manufacturer based in Danbury, Conn., said it may consider submitting the SOFC project for possible inclusion in the FutureGen initiative, which calls for development of an integrated coal gasification and power plant facility. In addition to gasifying coal and generating electricity through gas turbines, FutureGen is to produce hydrogen and strip out and capture CO2 and various pollutants before they are discharged out smokestacks.

The consortium of coal and power companies developing FutureGen is looking at sites in Ohio and Texas to build the facility.

The first phase of FuelCell Energy's coal-fueled SOFC project calls for scale-up and performance enhancement of an existing 3-kilowatt SOFC cell previously operated by the company for more than 2,000 hours, with all performance goals for power output, durability and efficiency being exceeded. The testing utilized the cell and stack design of Versa Power Systems Inc., which is FuelCell Energy's technology partner on the SOFC project.

The goal of the Phase I project is to test a stack building block unit operating on simulated coal syngas, and to construct an 80- to 100-kilowatt capacity stack tower, comprised of these building block units, to validate design components associated with a multi-stack tower.

General Electric, which is leading a rival research team on the coal- fueled SOFC project, recently announced it has developed and delivered to DOE a 6-kilowatt SOFC prototype for use in the program. GE said the prototype achieved an efficiency of 49 percent.