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August 25, 2016 CT Green Guide

CT cos., UConn energy projects net $7.7M from feds

Contributed Alstom's Clean Energy Lab in Bloomfield. The company is working on ways to enable cleaner coal plants.
By Matt Pilon

Danbury’s FuelCell Energy, Windsor’s Alstom Power and UConn will receive a total of $7.7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy for research projects and collaborations aimed at reducing pollution generated by fossil fuel-fired power generation and improve the cost, reliability and endurance of fuel cells, the DOE announced Wednesday.

The DOE is trying to spur a cost-effective way to combust fuels in high-oxygen environments rather than air, which eliminates much of the nitrogen that would otherwise be produced and results in a flue gas that includes carbon dioxide, water, coal ash and other materials. Such a process simplifies the separation of CO2 from the flue gas, DOE said.

But oxygen-fired combustion faces challenges including capital costs, energy consumption and supplying oxygen to the combustion system. DOE wants to find ways to lower the cost of oxygen supplied to a plant and to increase overall system efficiency.

A collaboration between Alstom and its parent company General Electric received $3.2 million for pre-project planning on a 10-megawatt pilot plant based on advanced combustion. The project, and two others that received funding, are meant to accelerate the scale-up of coal-based advanced combustion technologies capable of capturing 90 percent of CO2 generated, DOE said.

FuelCell is involved in three projects, which received a combined $3.7 million in funding.

The company received $3 million to work on what DOE termed transformational solid-oxide fuel cell technology.

A collaboration with an Albany, N.Y. company received $600,000 to work on a high-temperature anode recycle blower, which recirculates anode gas within a fuel cell.

Finally, FuelCell will work on a project with West Virginia University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Carpenter Technology Corp. aimed at reducing chromium evaporation through the use of different materials. That project received $370,000.

Meanwhile, UConn received $500,000 to develop cost-effective “getters” and sensors to capture and monitor chromium and sulfur impurities in the air stream that enters a fuel cell, which can degrade long-term performance.

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