BEND, Oregon August 8, 2001 - IdaTech, a subsidiary of IDACORP (NYSE:IDA) has received its fifth fuel cell system patent. It protects from unauthorized use or manufacture IdaTech's system to optimize purging of excess water from the fuel cell stack.
"Our optimized purge cycle helps maximize the fuel cell's use of the hydrogen fuel," said Dr. David Edlund, IdaTech's senior vice president and chief technology officer. "Our optimization method is done automatically and responds precisely to the load placed on the fuel cell system. That responsiveness ensures optimal performance occurs over a wide range of operating conditions."
"This is an important step forward in our efforts to bring an efficient fuel cell system to market," said IdaTech President and CEO Claude Duss. "Optimizing system operations is crucial to building product reliability and efficiency and this patent solidifies and protects one of our areas of technical advantage."
IdaTech fuel cells use PEM (proton exchange membrane) technology which generates electricity through an electro-chemical process that creates water and heat as byproducts. The efficiency of the process is affected by humidity levels in the PEM component and water must be purged from the system in order to prevent fuel cell operations from being impaired. Problems are encountered when the purging occurs too frequently or infrequently. Newly granted U.S. Patent No. 6,242,120 covers the mechanism that synchronizes the purging of the fuel cell stack with the rate at which water is produced.
In addition to the five patents issued in the United States, IdaTech has 46 other applications pending in this country and worldwide. IdaTech is a development-stage company, majority owned by Boise, Idaho-based IDACORP, Inc. (NYSE:IDA) For more information, visit www.idatech.com or www.idacorpinc.com.