Fuel cells hold the potential to radically change the way we power everything, from cars to electric grids to laptop computers. Fuel-cell technology offers many advantages over incumbent technology, the most touted of which are environmental. Unlike combustion technology, fuel cells are theoretically emission-free. If run on pure hydrogen, they produce nothing but electricity, heat and water that’s clean enough to drink.

They also boast higher output efficiencies. And because they convert the chemical energy of fuel directly into power, there are no moving mechanical parts, so they run very quietly and require little maintenance.

So it’s no wonder why many industries, from automotive to electronics, are exploring ways in which fuel cells could play a more predominant role in power generation of the future. Government and industry increasingly are working together to find ways to move fuel cells towards commercialization, but still there are many developmental hurdles to overcome.

Fuel Cell Vehicles

Much of the money and manpower being spent on fuel cell research and development has been devoted to transportation applications. Since cars and trucks account for two-thirds of all the oil consumed in the United States, transportation is an obvious market in which fuel cells could play a major role. However, due to cost and infrastructure issues, it might be the last to become commercially viable.

There has been some headway: Researchers have successfully boosted the power densities of fuel cells by a whopping factor of 10 and shrunk them to the point where they now fit nicely into small cars without sacrificing space for passengers and luggage. And their cost has plummeted from being a thousand times more costly than an internal combustion engine to only 10 times more.

Automotive engines powered by fuel cells offer some obvious advantages over internal combustion (IC) engines. The fuel cell catalyzes hydrogen and oxygen to produce energy with about 45 percent efficiency — more than twice that of the IC engine, which delivers less than 20 percent of the energy in a tank of gas to the wheels of the car. Fuel cells also run quieter and form the basis of a zero- or near-zero-emissions engine that can run on renewable fuel.

The automotive industry has invested heavily into fuel cell research, and most automakers now have fuel cell-powered prototypes on the road today, in fleet demonstration programs. Currently, more than 200 fuel-cell vehicles are being tested in fleet programs worldwide.

The public’s reaction to these cars has been encouraging, according to Catherine Dunwoody, executive director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership: “Everyone seems to have a very positive reaction to it,” she said. “They like knowing it’s something that’s good for the environment, although that’s not necessarily a motivating factor for most people when buying a vehicle; it’s sort of an added benefit. Most importantly, people really like the performance, because fuel cells offer all the benefits of an electric drive without the limitations of battery power.”

Stationary fuel systems

Stationary fuel-cell systems are increasingly becoming an additional or alternate source of power for homes, office buildings, telecommunications towers and electric grids. Companies in the fuel cell industry are working hard to prove that this technology can be used to provide reliable, clean energy.

A disruption to the power supply is of great concern to hospitals and businesses that rely on electricity for critical day-to-day operations. Backup power systems consisting of batteries, standby generators and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems are in place at many businesses in case a problem arises — but these solutions have been known to fail.

The early adapters of stationary fuel-cell systems will be businesses with high, consistent power demands and those who are paying a premium for electricity, Josh Lutton, director of Distributed Generation for Nuvera Fuel Cells (Cambridge, Mass.), believes.

“The people most interested in these systems are businesses located in areas with relatively high electricity costs, such as California and New York,” Lutton said, “and businesses that have a fairly consistent demand for heat, such as hotels and restaurants or industrial facilities.”

One company, UTC Fuel Cells, has installed more than 250 fuel cell power plants all over the world in banks, schools, postal facilities and police stations, as well as in a science center in Japan and at 30 U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) sites. The DOD sites are configured to provide backup power in case the local grid experiences a power outage.

Micro Applications

Hoping to give lithium ion batteries a run for their share of the $10-billion-a-year rechargeable-battery market, the makers of portable electronics products (companies such as Casio, Toshiba, Hitachi, Samsung and Motorola) are leading the charge towards micro fuel cells.

Used as portable chargers for current-generation batteries or as power sources for cell phones, pagers, camcorders, cameras, PDAs and some laptops, fuel cells offer a quantum leap over today’s lithium ion batteries. Estimates show that fuel cells eventually could offer charge times anywhere from two to 10 times longer than lithium ion batteries.

The methanol replacement cartridges themselves should offer some cost and size advantages over lithium ion batteries. The cartridges are expected to be 50 percent lighter and significantly smaller than batteries and cost approximately $1 to $3 per cartridge, whereas an extra lithium ion battery for a notebook PC typically retails for $150 or more. Initially, the technology will best fit into the high-end cell phone market, where consumers are more willing to pay a premium for longer usage times.

These high-end cell phones are expected to climb up to as much as five watts, compared to one to three watts today. Recharging would be done by simply replacing a methanol fuel cartridge that would range in size from a thumbnail to the size of a deck of cards.

This technology — in which fuel cells convert methanol to electricity through the use of a catalyst — seems to offer the most promise for the electronics industry because it converts the methanol to hydrogen before generating electricity. As a result, the cell phone or PDA using these types of fuel cells would not dissipate much heat, enabling users to hold them in their hands or carry them in their pockets.

In addition, methanol is easier to transport than gaseous hydrogen. The Department of Transportation (DOT) recently approved the use of one type of methanol fuel cell on airplanes, a big win for micro-fuel-cell developers.

Gaining customer acceptance of microfuel cells is vital to its eventual commercial success, according to Shimshon Gottesfeld, vice president and CTO at MTI Micro Fuel Cells. “We have to prove to the consumer that he or she is looking into a transparent transition from the incumbent technology, in which batteries are recharged by connecting them to an outlet, to a technology where you carry a refillable or replaceable cartridge of methanol,” Gottesfeld says.

“From the user’s perspective, replacing an empty methanol cartridge with a full one will not be different than replacing a discharged battery,” he adds. “And it can actually qualify as ‘hot swap,’ meaning that it can be performed without interruption of the powered device.”

Hurdles Remain

Despite much potential and a favorable political climate, many hurdles remain before fuel cells become commercially viable. For every one step forward, there are two stumbling blocks:

Cost

Many types of fuel cells require quite expensive rare metals, such as platinum, to coat their membranes. The “cost curve” theory of technology adoption dictates that fuel cells will enter into a particular market as a commercialized product only when the cost of the fuel cell hits the price point of the incumbent technology.

That’s one reason why fuel cells for micro applications are still a few years away from commercialization, according to Jerry Halmark, director of Motorola Labs in Tempe, Ariz.

“We’re not to the point where we can say that we can replace the form, function and size of a battery,” Halmark said. “Fuel cells are still several times more expensive today if you were in any type of volume production. It will take the volume to go up to get the cost down, which is the case with any new technology. Lithium batteries were initially two to three times more expensive than regular batteries, and now they’re found in pretty much all the applications.”

Since early price points may be too high for the average consumer, portable electronics manufacturers are initially targeting fire, police and emergency workers as well as the military.

For transportation applications, fuel cells have a long way to go. Current costs of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells, the most commonly used fuel cells for transportation applications, are $1,000-$3,000/ kW. Most experts agree that fuel cells will have to come down in cost to $50/kW to compete in the automotive market. If production volumes increased, costs would come down. For example, if 500,000 fuel cell engines were built per year, the cost would decrease to $195-$325/kW.

Durability

Current fuel-cell technology allows for a useful life of less than 5,000 hours. While private automobiles have a useful life of about 5,000 hours, most other transportation applications have significantly longer lifecycle requirements. Primary stationary power devices need to run for more than 40,000 hours; however, backup stationary power requires lifecycle durability requirements of around 5,000 hours.

Safety

Among consumers, safety is a concern, although safety issues appear to be based more on perception than reality. Hydrogen, in vast quantities, has been used safely in chemical and metallurgical applications, the food industry and the space program for decades. With proper handling and controls, hydrogen can be as safe as, or safer than, other fuels in use today.

The California Fuel Cell Partnership is working to educate the public and set aside any safety concerns regarding the use of hydrogen as a fuel.

“The truth is there’s really nothing inherently less safe about hydrogen than there is about gasoline,” says Dunwoody. “We’re all really used to gasoline even though it’s a very dangerous substance.”

Extraction and Storage

Hydrogen itself is inherently problematic. It currently takes more energy to extract hydrogen from natural gas or other fuels than the hydrogen itself delivers, and storing it has proven to be a real hassle. Though hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements in the universe, it is also the most difficult to store.

“As far as the technical challenges go, hydrogen storage is one of the biggest challenges to getting this technology ready to be commercialized,” says Dunwoody.

Scientists will have to eventually figure out a way to store enough hydrogen on board a car to provide the obligatory 300-mile driving range that consumers will demand.

Infrastructure

One reason fuel-cell-powered automobiles may be the last application to go commercial is the challenge of creating a hydrogen infrastructure. The hydrogen infrastructure would, in many ways, be similar to today’s petroleum and natural gas networks, featuring production plants, pipelines, delivery vehicles, storage facilities and refueling stations.

In the future, hydrogen refueling pumps will likely be positioned alongside their gasoline counterparts in established gas stations. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap estimates that up to 67,000 such refueling stations would be needed to satisfy 100 million fuel-cell vehicles, half the number of today’s light-duty vehicles.

The costs of creating such an infrastructure are staggering: A consortium of fuel cell companies has requested that the federal government invest $5.5 billion over the next 10 years, with $1 billion specifically earmarked for hydrogen infrastructure.

This, however, would be only a fraction of the expected private-sector investment in production, distribution and end-use equipment. Shell Hydrogen estimates that it would cost $19 billion to bring hydrogen to one-quarter of the current retail gasoline stations at a cost of $5 per kilogram, a far cry from the $1.50 per kilogram the DOE has targeted.

Going Commercial

Most fuel-cell experts agree that the first two markets to achieve commercialization will be backup power and micropower fuel cells (many companies are expected to roll out fuel-cell-powered portable electronics products by the end of this year).

However, it’s difficult to say with any amount of certainty when fuel cells will become a part of our everyday lives.

Nuvera’s Lutton believes that, in the future, fuel cells will operate quietly behind the scenes. “On the stationary side, most people will probably have their first interaction with a fuel cell and not even know it,” he said. “Most customers don’t know what’s going on in the boiler room; they just assume the power is going to work.” One thing is certain: Bringing a disruptive technology like fuel cells to market will require a plethora of resources — people, time, money and passion.

To date, companies in the United States and abroad have invested billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of work hours in fuel-cell research and development. However, many see government as a key player in pushing the technology towards commercialization.

“Government funding is still very important,” says Motorola’s Halmark. “It’s still fairly high-risk research in the minds of a lot of people, and there’s not going to be a huge payoff in the next year or two because it’s going to take a while to get the volume up. So you need some encouragement to continue putting money into it.”

Indeed, commercialization will require the unwavering commitment of commercial and government-supported research and development, legislation, university education programs and consumer education, as well as continued investment by fuel cell and component vendors.

Barb Schmitz is former editorial director of Fuel Cell Management magazine and is based in Cleveland, Ohio.