Global industrial gases giant BOC has entered into an agreement to run development trials of solid oxide fuel cell technology operating on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The innovative SOFC, which operates at intermediate temperatures of 550 - 600°C rather than the conventional 750 - 800°C, has been developed by UK-based Ceres Power, a spin-off from Imperial College London. Under the agreement, the two companies will over the next 6 - 18 months assess how LPG works with Ceres wafer-thin fuel cells.
Unlike most other fuel cells, the technology developed by Ceres Power does not need hydrogen as a feed gas, which means that LPG could be used to produce clean, silent power in a wide range of applications. The Ceres team has spent more than 12 years developing and proving its revolutionary intermediate-temperature SOFC technology, ahead of the pre-commercial trials now getting under way with BOC.
Ceres is targeting a range of global applications including residential power units, backup generators, telecoms base stations, construction sites and other off-grid locations. Its technology uses low-cost materials and existing mass-production techniques. Since 2001 the company has raised around £10 million (US$18m) in two rounds of private equity funding from backers including The Carbon Trust, funds managed by Fleming Family and Partners, RAB, Nikko, and Chicago Environmental. The UK's new energy minister, Mike O'Brien, recently opened the company's expanded product development and test facility in Crawley.
Last year BOC ran two stationary hydrogen PEM fuel cell trials in the UK a 100 We unit from Intelligent Energy at its Wolverhampton site, and a 500 We system from ReliOn (formerly Avista Labs) at its St Helens site [FCB, August 2003]. Earlier this year BOC worked with Orange and FDT Solutions to install a Plug Power 5 kWe hydrogen PEM fuel cell system to provide standby power to a mobile telecom system near Aberdeen [FCB, May].
