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Micro-power fuel cells, intended to power portable
electronic devices such as cell phones, PDAs and
laptop computers, will be the key technical and
economic driver for the entire fuel cell market
– including stationary and automotive applications.
The future market leaders in fuel cells will likely
be from those companies that aggressively participate
today in the development, manufacturing and marketing
of small, portable fuel cells for mobile applications.
Those companies that wait it out, or focus their
energies on the more technologically challenging
but less immediate segments, such as stationary
power or automotive applications, will literally
miss the boat, even in their own segments.
The reason is that the great engine that drives
rapid technological progress is “true market
demand.” And of the three key segments of
the long-awaited fuel-cell market, portable applications
will be ready for liftoff first. Cost and performance
of the technology are in line, volume distribution
channels are already in place, and a huge, pent-up
market demand is developing. Only regulatory issues
– principally the carriage of small fuel
cartridges on airplanes – remain an impediment,
one that is widely expected to disappear within
the next 18 months.
According to recent published studies, portable
device power demand is increasing three times
faster than the rate of battery improvement. This
gives rise to what we call a “run-time gap”
– the difference in the demand for energy
in devices such as PDAs, smartphones, laptops,
or MP3 players and energy actually available with
contemporary battery technology. By 2010, the
demand for energy is forecast to be four times
that which is available. The result is that users
of contemporary personal electronic devices will
experience run times measured in tens of minutes
versus the hours that they will demand. This is
the run-time gap and it is going to drive portable
fuel cells to mass commercialization years before
automotive fuel cells become economically viable
or stationary power fuel cells become widely deployed.
Technology Fallout
The same powerful processes that have given
us 50 million transistor computer chips, 300 gigabyte
hard disk drives, and $25 color television cameras
– to name a few – will be at work in
the portable fuel cell industry in the coming
years. The flow of money into the portable segment
will be profound and that will drive R&D at
a rate that will yield the familiar exponential
drops in price matched by exponential increases
in product performance. Advances will be made
– continuously and at an increasing rate
in every imaginable aspect of fuel cell designs,
materials and processes – that will significantly
raise the level of price-performance for all fuel
cell categories.
This represents a tremendous opportunity for those
companies that choose to aggressively play in
this segment, but a bane for those that don’t.
The downstream loss in terms of accumulated expertise
– particularly in materials and manufacturing
– will be significant. In the “brass
ring” represented by cheap, reliable automotive
fuel cells the prize will likely be won by those
who rode the portable fuel cell carousel, versus
those who remained focused only on the ring.
The logic of this argument has not been lost on
certain key industry players, who are jumping
on board to develop micro-power fuel cell systems.
Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, LG, NEC, Samsung, Sanyo,
Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba, among others, have publicly
acknowledged that they are actively working on
systems. A significant number of the leading fuel
cell component developers have also recognized
the market leadership opportunities that are available,
and are moving convincingly into the portable
fuel cell market space. When you – or your
kids – buy that first fuel cell car someday,
don’t be surprised to see one or more of
these names somewhere in the fuel cell power train.
In addition, BiC, Tokai, and Duracell, among others,
are tackling the cartridge and distribution issues,
which, for fuel cell cartridges are very similar
to those for cigarette lighters and batteries.
PolyFuel, which is well known in the industry
for its breakthroughs in portable fuel cell membrane
technology, has literally experienced the learning
curve and technology fallout phenomena first hand.
The hundreds of thousands of hours of R&D
that went into our hydrocarbon membranes for micro-power
fuel cells, and what we learned in working with
dozens of customers and potential customers, enabled
us to announce significant advances in hydrocarbon
membrane for automotive-hydrogen fuel cells. There
was a clear path from “A” to “B”.
The membrane is the crucial “heart”
of a fuel cell that enables it to convert fuel
into electricity.
At the end of the Ninth Grove Fuel Cell Symposium,
Dr. James Wilkie, a director at Johnson Matthey
Fuel Cells of Swindon, United Kingdom, stated
that direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) –
a predominant and leading technology for portable
fuel cells – were strong contenders to be
first, and that they would have spin-off benefits
for automotive and stationary.
Technical and Economic Details
Current fuel cell technology costs between $3,000
and $5,000 per kilowatt – in the economic
range for micro-power applications, but out of
range to marginal for stationary applications
($500 - $2,000 per kilowatt) and wildly out of
range for automotive (currently $20 to $50 per
kilowatt for gasoline/petrol).
In terms of durability, current fuel cell lifetimes
of 3,000 to 8,000 hours exceed the 2,000-hour
needs for portable devices but remains challenging
for automotive (5,000 hours for cars to 20,000
for buses and trucks), and a non-starter for stationary
applications (40,000 to 80,000 hours.)
By contrast, the infrastructure for stationary
is simple – the existing natural gas distribution
grid, as is that for portable – the existing
consumer distribution channels for batteries and
lighters. Automotive, however, with the need for
compressed hydrogen gas distribution, filling
stations and storage depots, remains profoundly
challenging.
Stationary applications include battery backup
systems for cell sites, standby power systems
for hospitals, and household combined heat and
power in countries with weak power grids.
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