Industrial, utility applications for fuel cell technology grow

With rising and unpredictable global facility operating costs due in part to fluctuating energy prices and environmental improvement expenditures, industrial and institutional facilities are looking for power generation options to mitigate these issues. Development of fuel cell technology is answering the call, providing users with an efficient, reliable, low-cost, low-emission and 24/7 base-load-generation option. One of the companies that has led commercial development of this technology is FuelCell Energy Incorporated (Danbury, Conn.).

Through the development of a Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell (MCFC) for commercial application in 2001, FuelCell Energy placed itself at the forefront of the fuel cell industry. Since being founded in 1969, FuelCell Energy has invested more than $530 million in fuel cell research and development. FuelCell Energy owns and operates a manufacturing plant in Torrington, Conn., with a capacity of 50-megawatts of fuels cells per year. The Danbury facility is also the hub for the company’s GTAC (Global Technical Assistance Center) monitoring system, which remotely monitors and operates 61 commercial fuel cell units in service all over the world, dispatching onsite technical support when needed. All of FuelCell Energy’s fuel cell power plants are unmanned.

The stand-alone fuel cell units range in size from 250 kilowatts to 2.4 megawatts and can be used in a multiple unit configuration to produce up 30 megawatts in generation capacity. The high-temperature MCFC technology has the ability to remain at thermal temperature even when preventive maintenance is being performed. This means that the unit does not have to go offline during most maintenance work, as is the case with traditional fossil fuel boiler and turbine maintenance work. The versatility of this technology has entered it into a billion dollar market.

“Once you get up to a 30-megawatt (MW) plant size, you are selling to large industrials and the utilities. This is a market that, until now, fuel cells were unable to penetrate. We are very optimistic of our growth and role in the industrial and utilities application market,” stated Andy Skok, executive director of strategic marketing for FuelCell Energy. “We will just have to see how well we compete against other technologies in the market since we are the new person on the block, as far as this market goes.”

FuelCell Energy is currently developing a 28-megawatt combined-cycle power plant by combining MCFC with commercial waste heat turbines for the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund Project 100. FuelCell Energy is also studying the development of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) for the Department of Energy to create a several hundred MW fuel cell power plant. With an operating temperature of about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, the SOFC has placed new challenges in the field of research and development to produce materials that will operate in a fuel cell at that temperature.

“Hopefully in the next five to 10 years, the technology will be available to make the MCFC and SOFC interchangeable, much like batteries are today, but today there is really only one high temperature technology available for industrial applications, and that is MCFC,” Skok stated.

He also mentioned that FCE and the United States Navy are currently looking into the development of the application of fuel cell technology for non-propulsion power generation aboard naval vessels.

Sierra Nevada Brewery, in league with FuelCell Energy, constructed a one-megawatt cogeneration facility in Chino, Calif., to prove the efficiency of MCFC technology when compared to reciprocating engines and turbines. FuelCell Energy also has constructed a number of these cogeneration facilities at wastewater facilities and breweries, which have made the fuel cell technology very competitive with other technologies in the renewable fuel and biogas operations. FuelCell Energy has taken this one step further by joining forces with the Linde Corporation, a leader in renewable and biogas development, and engineering to gain even more of a competitive edge in this particular market.

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