FuelCell gets $1.5M U.S. research grant

FuelCell Energy Inc. in Danbury has gotten $1.5 million from the Army Corps of Engineers to finance ongoing research into a more efficient electrochemical process for separating hydrogen from gas, the company said.

FuelCell said the corps' Engineer Research and Development Center - Construction Engineering Research Laboratory is funding development of its electrochemical hydrogen separator.

The system separates pure hydrogen from gas internally generated in a fuel cell that can be used for industrial and transportation applications, the company said.

As part of its research, the company plans to link one of its large-scale fuel cell power systems with a prototype hydrogen separator.

The unit would produce 300 kilowatts of electricity, heat and up to 300 pounds per day of pure hydrogen more economically than other methods, said Christopher Bentley, FuelCell executive vice president in charge of government R&D.

Conventional methods of separating hydrogen rely on a complex step using mechanical compression, Bentley said.

FuelCell's proprietary technology has no moving parts and does not use compression, possibly leading to higher reliability and efficiency, he said. It may also need half the energy compared to conventional compression methods of producing hydrogen.

FuelCell's government R&D program will span 20 months and prepare for a field demonstration of the technology.