UTC Fuel Cells

The Town of South Windsor, Connecticut, used funding from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund to install a natural gas powered 200-kW PC25 fuel cell system, from UTC Fuel Cells, at the South Windsor High School. The system provides heat and electricity to the high school along with learning opportunities for the students. 

A typical system that is commercially available in the United States is the 200 kilowatt (kW) PAFC unit produced by UTC Fuel Cells. This is the type of unit used to provide electricity and heat to the U.S. Postal Service s Anchorage Mail Handling Facility. In 2000, the Chugach Electric Association installed a 1 Megawatt (MW) fuel cell system at the U.S. Postal Service s Anchorage Mail Handling Facility. The system consists of five natural gas powered 200-kW PC25 fuel cells developed by UTC Fuel Cells. 

Fuel Cell Today Fuel Cells 2000 FuelCell Info.Com FuelCell Energy Forschungszentrum Julich Honeywell Plug Power U.S. Fuel Cell Council UTC Fuel Cells Westinghouse Electric Co. 

By 2003, more than 160 years after the first fuel cell was built, and after more than 15 billion in public and private spending, only one fuel cell with significant commercial sales existed, and purchasers of that product received a government subsidy to buy down the cost.2 Moreover, the manufacturer of that specific product, UTC Fuel Cells, is phasing it out in favor of newer technologies. This chapter examines the fuel cells that are the subject of the most government and corporate interest today. It is for the more techni-... 

Phosphoric acid fuel cells rely on expensive components and, like pems, use platinum catalysts to accelerate the chemical reactions at the electrodes. Finally, they have not achieved the level of sales needed to significantly reduce manufacturing costs. For these reasons, UTC Fuel Cells is phasing out production of phosphoric acid fuel cells in favor of pem fuel cell technology, which is likely to be significantly less expensive. 

The 200 kW phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) was introduced into the market in 1991 by International Fuel Cells/ ONSI, now called UTC Fuel Cells. It is the only commercialized fuel cell technology. PAFC units have been installed in various applications—commercial, small industrial, landfill, and military—and some are used for cooling, heating, and power. To date there have been 250 units sold, at roughly 4500/kW. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has cost-shared the purchase of three-quarters of the units sold to date. The units have performed well they have operated at 95 to 98 percent availability and 99.99 to 99.9999 percent reliability and have served 4 million customers and accumulated 4 million hours of operation. The cost of PAFC units has not decreased and in fact has increased from 3500/... 

The DOE issued a solicitation in January 2003 for the development of stationary PEMFC for buildings, with the target cost of 1500/kW, design life of 40,000 hours with less than 10 percent degradation, and market entry within the next 3 to 5 years.5 Recently UTC Fuel Cells announced that it will introduce 150 kW PEMFC units at 1500/kW in... 

As part of the early work to find alloys ofplatinum with higher reactivity for oxygen reduction than platinum alone, International Fuel Cells (now UTC Fuel Cells, LLC.) developed some platinum-refractory-metal binary-alloy electrocatalysts. The preferred alloy was a platinum-vanadium combination that had higher specific activity than platinum alone.25 The mechanism for this catalytic enhancement was not understood, and posttest analyses26 at Los Alamos National Laboratory showed that for this binary-alloy, the vanadium component was rapidly leached out, leaving behind only the platinum. The fuel- cell also manifested this catalyst degradation as a loss of performance with time. In this instance, as the vanadium was lost from the alloy, so the performance of the catalyst reverted to that of the platinum catalyst in the absence of vanadium. This process occurs fairly rapidly in terms of the fuel-cell lifetime, i.e., within 1-2000 hours. Such a performance loss means that this Pt-V alloy combination may not be important commercially but it does pose the question, why does the electrocatalytic enhancement for oxygen reduction occur ... 

Alternative materials for bipolar plates include graphite, stainless steels, titanium and aluminium, all with a developed fabrication technique, and coating technique if needed. Major competitors UTC Fuel Cells has an active fuel cell bus programme, but give sparse details of its flow plate and other technology. (See UTC web site.)... 

United Technologies Fuel Cells is engaged in DMFC development, in competition with Ballard/Johnson Matthey. It is a part in the project by Renault to develop the Scenic vehicle fuel cell. Neither for its PEFC, nor for its DMFC (and MCFC), does UTC Fuel Cells offer product-coloured illustrations. Moreover, its literature or listed web site does not deal with the cell voltage reversal problem, mentioned in Ballard patents above in connection with fuel cell bus operation. Accordingly it is not possible for the author to portray the UTC Fuel Cells scheme of things. 

UTC Fuel Cells has partnered with Shell Hydrogen to develop a variety of fuel processors for natural gas, gasoline, and diesel feed for PEMFC, phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC), and distributed H2 production applications.8... 

UTC Fuel Cells has partnered with Nissan and Shell Hydrogen to develop a 50-kW on-board gasoline fuel processor with a volume of 78 L and weight of 65kg. The start-up time is 3.5min.8... 

U-Gas, 160, 201 Uhde. See Ein Unternhmn von ThyssenKrupp Technologies Union Carbide Corporation, 281, 418 -19 UniPure Corporation, 296 United Catalyst/Sud-Chemie, 236 UOP LLC, 228-229, 281, 367, 419, 471 UTC Fuel Cell, 136-137, 255... 

Fig. 5 A 75-kW stack under testing (courtesy of UTC Fuel Cells).

Ballard, UTC Fuel Cells, Honda, and Toyota. It should be apparent why companies like GM are now indicating that they will be deploying their fuel cells in stationary power quality markets as interim tests and applications of their fuel cell technology. 

Silver, R.G. UTC Fuel Cells, EEC, assignee. Shift converter having an improved catalyst composition and method for its use. US Patent 6,455,182, 2002. 

The SurePower system uses four phosphoric acid fuel cells made by UTC Fuel Cells which provide 320-kW for critical power needs. The fuel cells are combined with flywheels and advanced electronics to minimize the affects of disruptions. Each of the four fuel cells provides 200-kW, so the system redundancy achieves the high availability. 

Hyundai Santa Fe SUV Ambient-pressure fuel cell 75 kW/ PEM UTC fuel cells... 

President Bush and UTC Fuel Cells President William Miller discuss fuel cell technology... 

Delivered and tested a 50 kW integrated power plant configured for system verification testing at UTC Fuel Cells (UTCFC) and delivered the power plant to DOE for follow-on testing at ANL... 

UTC Fuel Cells Dr. Shari Bugaj Carbothermal synthesis of ternary Pt alloys [Pt-Ir-X and Pt-Rh-X, [X=Ni, Co and V]]... 

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