The Future of PAFCs

Toward the end of the 1990s, interest in PAFCs and PAFC-based power plants gradually waned, despite the success that had been achieved, the relatively large number of intermediate-power PC-25 plants built, and the installation of several megawatt-sized power plants in a number of places. On the one hand, this had a strictly economic basis the high cost of such plants. On the other hand, there were strictly technical problems, that is, insufficient operating reliability in the long term. 

Song et al. (2000) found that a reduction in the rate of gas supply to the electrodes or, worse, the complete cessation of gas supply may in individual cases lead to irreversible performance loss. 

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