Fuel cell achieves major milestone with 12 months longevity
AFC Energy (AIM: AFC), the fuel cell energy developer for industry, is pleased to announce that its revolutionary low-cost, platinum-free fuel cell electrode has set a new Company longevity and endurance record by delivering continuous electrical power for 12 months.
The Company's laboratory electrode passed this milestone late last week after remaining operational beyond 8760 hours at its state-of-the-art facility in Dunsfold, Surrey, UK.
The design and materials used in this electrode have already been validated for volume manufacturing and incorporation into AFC's first 250kW commercial-grade fuel cell system, which has been given the generic name 'Kore' by the Dunsfold team.
This latest milestone increases confidence in the Company's ability to commercialise its fuel cell power generation systems in major industrial markets and its potential to achieve high returns in countries such as Korea, where fuel cells attract a high level of incentives and where AFC is actively pursuing new partners.
Ian Williamson, chief executive of AFC Energy, commented: "We have proven the robustness of our world class fuel cell technology for industrial and stationary applications with the aim of making it competitive with both renewable and fossil fuel technologies. The next steps are to replicate this 12 month longevity in real world environments, continue improving our electrode power output and introduce our 'Kore' large scale systems. I am confident that we are already well placed to advance our ongoing dialogue with existing and potential new partners to translate today's news into future commercial contracts."
AFC Energy has focussed on lowering the cost of fuel cell derived energy by extending fuel cell longevity, improving power output, developing low cost materials and by adapting proven volume manufacturing processes for its fuel cell production. This achievement goes hand-in-hand with the improvements the Company is seeing in power output from its technology, an area where AFC Energy has already made great strides with a 60% increase over the past year.
The experience and information gained from this success has immediately been applied to the Company's trials with its longstanding partner, Azko Nobel, one of the world's largest chemicals groups and a UK-based commercial scale demonstration project, Power Up, which is supported by the European Union.
Dr. Gene Lewis, Technical Director at AFC Energy, commented: "It is a proud moment for the technical team in achieving this milestone, which demonstrates the potential of our technology and the rapid progress being made to commercialise it. I firmly believe we have a disruptive low cost technology that can shake up the entire fuel cell industry in the next few years."
Electrodes are the critical components of a fuel cell which enable the electrochemical reactions to occur between hydrogen and oxygen (from air) to generate electricity, heat and water.
