FuelCellsWorks

ORIGIN ENERGY JOINS DEMONSTRATION PROJECT

Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited [AIM/ASX: CFU], a leading developer of high efficiency and low emission electricity generation units for homes and other buildings, today announced that it has installed a BlueGen power and heating unit with VicUrban, the Victorian Government’s sustainable urban development agency.

The first BlueGen unit has been installed at a VicUrban sales office in the Aurora Housing Development in the Melbourne suburb of Epping. VicUrban’s Aurora project is the first six-star energy-efficient community development in Australia.

The BlueGen unit will be switched on in early January, generating low emission power and hot water from readily available natural gas.

Origin Energy has also joined in the demonstration project as VicUrban’s selected energy retailer. Origin Energy will buy back excess electricity generated by the VicUrban BlueGen units.

The Epping BlueGen unit is the first of three units that will be installed at VicUrban housing developments. All sites will showcase Ceramic Fuel Cells’ low-emission gas-to-electricity BlueGen products to the general public and commercial home builders.

The second BlueGen unit will be installed in VicUrban’s Sustainable and Affordable Living Centre in Dandenong, in mid 2010. The third BlueGen unit will be installed in another VicUrban site later in 2010.

BlueGen is the latest breakthrough in small scale electricity generation. About the size of a small washing machine, each BlueGen unit can produce up to 17,000 kilowatt hours of power a year – twice the electricity needed to power an average home. Surplus electricity can be exported back to the grid.

BlueGen units can generate electricity at up to three times the efficiency of the current Victorian power grid, significantly reducing each home’s carbon emissions and cutting energy bills.

The contract with VicUrban formalises a Memorandum of Understanding signed by Ceramic Fuel Cells and VicUrban when the BlueGen product was launched by Victorian Premier John Brumby in May 2009.

Place the hearing aid in a docking station. Wait 10 seconds while it fills 200 µl methanol and the hearing aid will have enough energy for 72 hours of use. Simultaneously, the inconvenient shift of zinc-batteries will become history and the environmental impact will be reduced to a minimum.

Højteknologi Fonden has just awarded DKK 15M for the project called MicroPowerDK submitted by Teknologisk Institut, DTU Nanotech, Kemisk Institut / iNANO Århus Universitet, and Widex A/S. During the next 3 years, the consortium will develop a ground-breaking Micro Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (µDMFC), which will be the size of a zinc battery.

The vision is to be the first in the world with a simple and user-friendly system with at least the same performance as a battery.

With 40 million users worldwide and a consumption of batteries around 4 billion a year, the market potential is obviously massive.

A big part of the development will take place in the cleanroom DTU Danchip in Lyngby, Denmark.

The micro fuel cell will be based on MEMS technology and Nano-based material technology will be used for manufacturing the membrane and the catalyst.

Written by Ken Kingery

MOSCOW, Idaho – Students and faculty at the University of Idaho soon will shine a light on what could be the next evolution of materials used for hydrogen fuel cells.

A really, really big light.

Supported by a three-year, $450,000 grant from the Department of Energy, the group will use the brightest x-ray beams in the western hemisphere to probe the most basic chemical properties of rhodium and ruthenium.

“We’re excited as hell,” said Tom Bitterwolf, professor of chemistry at the University of Idaho, who is leading the team of scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., and Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, Ill., as well as his own undergraduate and graduate students. “This study has never been done before. It’s on the outer edge of what is possible.”

Storing hydrogen for use in a fuel cell is not difficult. However, making that storage device light enough for applications such as hydrogen-powered cars is beyond modern science.

According to Bitterwolf, the key to bringing the future into today may rest in the ability to release hydrogen from a class of compounds called aminoboranes: very simple molecules that possess a high density of hydrogen.

One way to release this compound’s hydrogen is with a metal catalyst such as rhodium or ruthenium. In order to understand the reaction between the aminoboranes and these metals at the smallest scales imaginable, Bitterwolf plans to zap them with x-rays created by electrons traveling at nearly the speed of light.

Snapshots of chemical reactions are taken by analyzing the patterns of the x-rays interacting with the sample. But these are no ordinary snapshots. These images can be taken in a matter of a trillionth of a second – a very small period of time in which even light can travel only a single millimeter.

“One of the cool parts of this project is that it requires about a half-a-billion dollar light bulb,” explained Bitterwolf. “So the physics will be done with the Advanced Proton Source at Argonne. But the preparations and analytics will be done in Moscow and at PNNL.”

Making sense of the patterns made by the x-rays demands an enormous amount of computing power and experience using it. For this, Bitterwolf is teaming with long-time colleagues at PNNL who have tremendous expertise in doing the spectral interpretation.

But before the data can be collected at Argonne, just outside of Chicago, and interpreted in Richland, Wash., preparations must be made in Moscow, at University of Idaho labs.

For more than a year, graduate students have been doing preliminary studies to make sure the chemistry happens like it is supposed to. They’ve been preparing the samples, building computer clusters and practicing with the programs used for calculations.

Total preparation is necessary because using the x-ray beam lines at the Argonne lab is no small deal. The machine’s time is so valuable – thousands of dollars per hour – that it runs around the clock.

“It’s a beautiful collaborative project,” said Bitterwolf. “The Department of Energy is providing funding for us to use a national facility and we have two major national laboratories working with the University of Idaho. And it’s really cool chemistry. We’re very happy critters.”

The Egyptian design studio Pharos Marine has unveiled plans for a new 60 metre eco-friendly superyacht, Orcageno. The yacht is based around an advanced slender hull form with an axe bow, offering lower resistance due to low angle of entrance, excellent sea-keeping and a range of up to 13,000 nautical miles. The hull design is to have a minimal surface and hull wake, thus reducing its impact on sensitive marine life as well as shoreline erosion.

The hull is propelled by a hydrogen diesel-electric system. The benefit of hydrogen fuel is that it contains three times the energy to be found in diesel fuel as well having no carbon monoxide or dioxide in the exhaust (zero carbon foot print).

High safety standards are applied for hydrogen tanks to provide reliable operation conditions during loading and consumption of hydrogen fuel. The tanks are well isolated and fabricated from stress resistant material connected to each other by means of pipes and valves with sensors to indicate any leakage of hydrogen gas with a reliable shut down emergency system to ensure safety at all times.

The propulsion system uses a generator driven by a hydrogen-diesel internal combustion engine which can be operated by either hydrogen or diesel oil to provide power for the Azipod units. As a result, wide ranges can be obtained for hydrogen and diesel operation modes, at a speed of 10 knots, operating on hydrogen mode, it can reach more than 3500 nautical miles and at speed of 18 knots it can reach more than 1800 nautical miles. The forward slender spaces in the yacht are used efficiently for the storage of hydrogen tanks and tender boats.

Pharos Marine Ltd
+203 4251858
contact@pharos-marine.com
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