The Present State and Future Prospects of AFC Work

The AFC-based power plants for Apollo and Orbiter spacecrafts described above have been used for numerous flights and attained a total operating time of tens of thousands of hours. Systematic long-term tests of simpler power plants for terrestrial applications have hardly been reported in the literature. It was said that, in a number of tests, the time to failure was 2000-3000 h. 

As with the other fuel cell types, periods of pronounced ups and downs can be distinguished in R D for AFCs. Work in the United States, Europe, and a number of Asian countries evolved very vigorously after the 1960 demonstration of Bacon s battery and, more particularly, after the first flight of the Apollo spacecraft having the new power plant on board. 

It has been entirely justified to build spacecraft power plants with AFCs. This has also to do with the fact that, in this application, cryogenic storage of the fuel and oxidant, hydrogen and oxygen, is feasible economically and technically. In addition, it was an important aspect that the water produced during operation could be used as drinking water for the crew. The same situation exists in a number of other manned mobile installations, such as bathyscaphs and submarines. 

---