Texas Fuel Cell Activities

The CCEF recently issued the 2002 Fuel Cell Request for Proposal (RFP) to promote clean, reliable distributed generation in Connecticut and the commercialization of fuel cells. The funding level for the 2002 Fuel Cell RFP could reach almost 9 million. 

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Fuel Cell Forecast Current Texas Fuel Cell Activities... 

Additional employment opportunities may emerge if fuel cell manufacturing facilities are established in Texas. At present, there are no such facilities in the state, nor are there any announced plans for building such facilities. On the other hand, there are indications that such facilities wiU probably be built in "early adopter" markets. In fact, a representative of one manufacturer indicated that his company would consider building a plant in Texas if installations reached 50 MW (megawatts) per year. It should be noted that hydrogen production at the Dow plant in Freeport (see Planned Fuel Cell Activities section) is a natural by-product of an existing production process. This "production" would take place even if Dow had no interest in fuel cells. 

Christine Herbert (Executive Director, Fuel Cells Texas) provided information about fuel cell activities in Texas. 

Researchers are looking at ways to reduce the amount of platinum yet retain the catalytic activity. Peter Strasser, a researcher at the University of Houston in Texas, and his colleagues are trying to develop a platinum alloy that will do the job. An alloy such as bronze is a combination of elements, which in the case of bronze are tin and copper. Engineers often use alloys because they offer properties that are superior to those of a single metal, as described in chapter 1. A platinum alloy that acts as an effective catalyst in fuel cell electrodes yet contains less platinum would save a substantial amount of money. 

Early reports on the use of Pt alloys as ORR catalysts for PEM fuel cells were published by a group of scientists at Texas A M University in the early 1990s [4-6]. They created a series of Pt alloys, including Pt-Ni, Pt-Co, Pt-Cr, Pt-Mn, and Pt-Fe, at high temperature (900 °C) under an inert atmosphere. These alloys can be expressed as Pt-M (where M is the non-noble metal alloying component). In the process of activity down-selection, a composition of 75(Pt) 25(M) was found to be... 

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