Protonex Announces Technical Updates

Protonex Technology has announced that it has successfully achieved the following technical advances on its solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) platforms:

1. As part of an ongoing development programme with Cummins Power Generation, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Protonex recently demonstrated over 500 hours of operation of a CPOX fuel reforming subsystem running on ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel without any added water (either external or recovered from the system). This demonstration included the vaporisation of ULSD in hardware compatible with portable power systems. In addition, the Company has demonstrated the operation of its SOFC stacks running directly on the resulting reformate.

Looking forward the Company expects to introduce fuel cell power products that operate on a variety of liquid fuels with only minor adjustments to its proprietary CPOX fuel reformers and SOFC systems. These fuels include gasoline, ethanol, bio-diesel, bio- butanol, and several grades of standard and synthetic military and aviation fuels.

2.Protonex focused its early commercial SOFC development efforts on propane-fuelled systems and expects its first commercial SOFC products to be propane-fuelled.The Company is currently focused on designing, building and testing fully functional propane SOFC generator prototypes to verify system performance and product readiness. Protonex has already demonstrated over 1,000 hours of SOFC stack operation fed by propane reformed in one of our proprietary CPOX reformers.

The SOFC portion of Protonex' business originated within Mesoscopic Devices, which was acquired by Protonex in April 2007.
 

Source: Fuel Cell Today