MANCHESTER, UK--ACAL Energy Ltd. has announced the successful operation of a completely new type of fuel cell system based on its proprietary recirculating liquid cathode technology, known as FlowCath®.  A 50W fully integrated multi-cell system incorporating the Flowcath technology was operated for the first time last week and produced even higher power levels than expected.

The FlowCath system replaces the standard and expensive platinum cathode found in conventional fuel cells with a liquid non-precious metal catalyst system. This not only reduces the cost of the cell, but also humidifies the membrane naturally, eliminating the need for additional hydration systems, and better manages the heat which is generated.

Fuel cells are an emerging and highly efficient energy production technology, with a wide variety of potential applications including remote and distributed power applications, as well as home cogeneration, automotive and consumer electronics applications. Until now, adoption of fuel cells has been limited due to high costs and poor reliability. ACAL Energy’s FlowCath technology will provide a route to faster commercial application by reducing system costs and enabling greater reliability.

“The fact that we have managed successfully to build a 10-cell stack, and get the integrated system working so quickly is down to our approach of changing only those parts of the system necessary to adopt our FlowCath technology, keeping everything else the same” comments Dr Andrew Creeth, inventor of the technology. Although FlowCath is radically different from conventional systems, it has so far been simple to make the modifications necessary to incorporate our technology.”

Dr Creeth continued “Our next step is to scale up from this 50W system to a 1kW unit, as well as running the system to demonstrate the expected long term durability advantages of our approach. By addressing a number of significant issues for the commercialisation of fuel cells, our technology will have appeal to a whole range of fuel cell developers and manufacturers across the world.”