Fuel Cell Nation

Lynntech Spins-off FuelCellsEtc

FuelCellsEtc produces Membrane Electrode Assemblies (MEA), Catalyst-Coated Membranes (CCM), Gas Diffussion Electrodes (GDE) and other fuel cell-related materials that were formerly sold by Lynntech's Commercial Fuel Cell Components Division. I've seen the following pair of headlines describing the formation of this company:

October 18, 2011: FuelCellsEtc has acquired Lynntech’s Commercial Fuel Cell Components (CFCC) Division.

And:

October 18, 2011: Lynntech Spins-off Commercial Fuel Cell Components Division as FuelCellsEtc.

I know it is a small point, but was it a spin-off or a purchase? I'm always interested in the details of how companies start. As they say, enquiring minds want to know...

One small clue is that FuelCellsEtc registered their domain on January 11, 2009. So it appears they had been planning the transaction for some time prior to the press release. That means it was almost a three-year quiet roll-out.

A second clue to this slow build up is that twtrland.com reports that @FuelCellsEtc has been active on Twitter since January 11, 2010.

And on LinkedIn, I found a notice for the 2010 Fuel Cell Seminar & Exposition October 18, 2010 - October 21, 2010, where Daniel Westerheim (Founder at FuelCellsEtc) said "Our booth number has changed to B128..."

In any event, regardless of whether it was a spin-out or a sale, I wish them a belated congratulations, and I hope they make a go of it! (And yes, I follow them on LinkedIn and Twitter.)

Daniel Westerheim (Founder at FuelCellsEtc). Our booth number has changed to B128

Improved Membrane Water Transport

Robert Moore and Louis Madsen's groups at Virgina Tech claim to have done something quite interesting: increase the diffusivity of water in DuPont's Nafion^TM, the 50-year old membrane that is at the core of much current hydrogen fuel cell and electrolyzer work!

How did they do this? By stretching the Nafion^TM, using a draw ratio of up to 4:1.

Apparently, their data show that the water-conducting channels within the membrane become aligned during the stretching process. (See Figure 4 below.) In Figure 4.a, random water channels exist in the as-received membrane. In Figure 4.b, there is some alignment in the draw direction (blue arrow). Finally, in the at a 4:1 draw ratio shown in Figure 4.c, there is significant water channel alignment. Similar to nematic liquid crystals, the stretching does not change the water channel alignment or connectivity; this leads to anisotropic water transport.

Li et al Figure 4

The anisotropic nature of the water transport behavior is evident in the following Figure 2:

Li et al Figure 2

In the left figure, Figure 2.a, you can see how the diffusivity of water in the draw, or X direction (D_xx) is markedly higher than the diffusivity in the transverse directions (D_yy and D_zz). This relationship holds for all draw ratios tested, between 1:1 (as-received membrane) and 4:1.

Their data in Figure 2.a have been arithmetically averaged and plotted in Figure 2.b. This figure shows that the average water diffusivity curves for all the drawn membranes collapse to match that of the isotropic, as-received membrane.

What are the practical applications of this? Well, it may be possible to align membrane water passageways in the through-plane direction through the use of electric or magnetic field alignment methods used on liquid crystals, liquid crystal polymers and block copolymers. The resultant aligned membrane would have increased through-plane water (and proton) transport, resulting in improved PEM device (e.g. fuel cell) operation.

The complete paper is available at:

Jing Li, Jong Keun Park, Robert B. Moore & Louis A. Madsen; "Linear coupling of alignment with transport in a polymer electrolyte membrane," Nature Materials | Letter, 10(7):507-11; Jun 19, 2011.

US DOE Electrolyzer Webinar Presentations

DOE has finally posted the slide presentations and audio from the May 23, 2011 Webinar titled "Hydrogen Production by PEM Electrolysis—Spotlight on Giner and Proton."

 

Overview presentation slides, Eric Miller, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

 

Monjid Hamdan's presentation slides, Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC.

 

Katherine Ayers' presentation slides, Proton Energy Systems.

 

And (please excuse the audio) the webinar recording: (WMV 94 MB).

US DOE Electrolyzer Webinar

Its not much advanced warning, but today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it is putting on a webinar on Monday, May 23, 2011, from 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. (EDT) titled "Hydrogen Production by PEM Electrolysis—Spotlight on Giner and Proton." The webinar will include a discussion of the importance of electrolysis for renewable hydrogen production with zero carbon footprint (provided you use solar, wind, etc. to generate the electric power.) (The webinar was originally supposed to be at 1:00 p.m., but the DOE personnel had another meeting crop up.)

 Monjid Hamdan of Giner Electrochemical Systems (GES) will be one of the two industry-based presenters at the webinar. I've seen his slides; it should be a good presentation for all, as it involves an emphasis on the technology, and its not just a sales job for GES' commercial products.

One final note: DOE calls it Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) electrolysis, while old-school electrochemists prefer to call it Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolysis. Same difference — its all good!

Crystal City, Here I Come!

Time for the 2011 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program and Vehicle Technologies Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting (AMR). May 9-13, 2011 I am traveling to the Crystal City Marriott and Crystal Gateway Marriott, in Arlington, Virginia to make a poster presentation. The Poster is for the first year of a Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant I wrote titled "Unitized Design for Home Refueling Appliance for Hydrogen Generation to 5,000 psi."

The Poster presentation for the last year's Phase I work at Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC is located here: Unitized Design for Home Refueling Appliance for Hydrogen Generation to 5,000 psi.

Here is some background on the project:

"U.S. automakers have invested significant resources in the research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. However, to enable their widespread use, an additional major investment will be required to construct an infrastructure for hydrogen production and delivery to fueling stations. In order to facilitate this transition, the DOE has recommended that high-pressure hydrogen generation for home refueling of fuel cell vehicles be implemented as an intermediary approach.

GES has developed PEM-based electrolyzer technology for producing hydrogen at moderate to high pressure directly in the electrolyzer stack ... A low-cost process for producing high-pressure hydrogen from water by electrolysis will significantly advance the development of the hydrogen economy, providing hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles at a price competitive with that of gasoline on a per-mile basis. The ability to produce hydrogen economically, the relatively low capital cost of the electrolyzer unit, and the low maintenance cost of the unit will allow widespread distribution of hydrogen home fueling appliances deemed necessary for the introduction of fuel cell vehicles."

I just submitted a U.S. Patent application on this idea, so I can't really say anything in addition to what's in the public documents. But, enjoy!

Smart New Membrane

It has been fun here at Giner Electrochemical Systems watching some smart people conceive of and develop a fundamentally different proton exchange membrane (PEM). This new Dimensionally Stable Membrane (DSM™) offers a marked improvement in mechanical properties over conventional PEM membranes like DuPont's Nafion^® 112.

Recently released U.S. Patent 7,867,669, Solid polymer electrolyte composite membrane comprising laser micromachined porous support describes a new Giner patent covering another aspect of its structure. In this patent, a perforated sheet of a strong engineering plastic has its holes filled with (for instance) a low equivalent-weight PEM material. Subsequently, different equivalent weight PEM is added to both sides of the central sheet. This composite DSM material shows stellar mechanical stability compared to the “gold-standard” DuPont Nafion 112 (Nafion) with a creep rate, as well as X-Y in-plane swelling at least one order of magnitude lower than Nafion.

This new material can be used in hydrogen fuel cells, direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC), electrolyzers, and for any application that uses PEM, to provide improved electrochemical performance. For instance, in 2008, Giner demonstrated DSM™ membrane on a 160 cm² active area cell that met the DOE’s electrolyzer performance targets for 2012.

Congratulations Han, Tony, Corky, Tom, and everyone else working on DSM!

7,867,669

Solid polymer electrolyte composite membrane comprising laser micromachined porous support

Interesting Pizza Seminar

Myoungbae Lee, a postdoc at the Virginia Tech Department of Chemical Engineering (Jim McGrath's group), was recently at Giner to work with some of our specialized membrane characterization equipment. He made a presentation for us while he was here at one of our periodic Pizza Seminars, which expanded on Effects of block length and solution-casting conditions on the final morphology and properties of disulfonated poly(arylene ether sulfone) multiblock copolymer films for proton exchange membranes.

We got to hear some of his latest results concerning details of his work with us on a DOE Fuel Cell project. The VT multiblock copolymer materials are a potential future source of low-cost proton exchange membrane (PEM). Though specifically addressing the effect of various (thermal and other) treatments on the properties of the VT membranes, it helped give us insight into other PEMs, including Nafion (today's baseline fuel cell membrane).