FCB enhanced online

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 75 KB
• Volume: 2007
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1464-2859
• DOI: 10.1016/s1464-2859(07)70437-6

✦ Synopsis

11 the company's work to develop a new, ultra-low crossover membrane for portable fuel cells.

The project is part of NIST's Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which seeks to support and promote key technologies that are expected to deliver significant potential benefits to US industry and the economy. The objective of PolyFuel's project is to dramatically move portable fuel cell technology forwards by developing a membrane that exhibits ultra-low levels of fuel crossover, with a target reduction of 75% relative to the already low levels achieved by the company to date.

PolyFuel, which is focused in particular on engineered membranes, says that most of the world's leading consumer electronics manufacturers are either testing or have already adopted the firm's current generation of low-crossover membrane materials. Provided the NIST ATP project is successful, it will allow portable fuel cell system developers to design systems that are even smaller, lighter, cheaper and longer-running than those made possible using existing materials currently available from PolyFuel.

This award follows the announcement in the summer that the Department of Energy had restored approximately $2m in program funding to PolyFuel, for the development of a prototype 'reference design' for a power supply capable of running a laptop PC all day [FCB, July 2007].

'We believe that we are on the cusp of seeing portable fuel cells surpass lithium-ion batteries in terms of size and weight for all day run-time laptop PC applications, but there are plenty of opportunities to advance the technology even further,' says Jim Balcom, the firm's president/ CEO. 'The NIST ATP award provides just such an opportunity. If successful, the rate of adoption of this technology can be expected to increase, and the types of potential applications for portable fuel cells expanded.'