Hydrogen Fuel Cells: a new technology for portable power generation

Hydrogen to fuel the future

At a recent meeting of the IoRW Management Committee, BOC gave an impressive demonstration of a hydrogen fuel cell electricity generator

Portable petrol and diesel generators are inefficient at part load, are noisy and emit fumes - all of these factors are disadvantages in some, if not all, applications. That is why BOC have developed an environmentally-friendly alternative that provides a more efficient source of power for today's high tech, low energy technologies like floodlighting.

The hydrogen economy has been in the news for years - the challenge has been to translate the theory into practical applications. BOC and its parent the Linde Group have been at the forefront of research into ways of translating the physics and chemistry into engineering products. The new hydrogen fuel cell generator has a number of major advantages over conventional fossil fuel-driven units.

Hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity from the reaction of hydrogen with oxygen from the air. Like a battery, a fuel cell employs an electrochemical process that produces no sound and is very efficient. What is more, the only exhaust emissions from a hydrogen fuel cell electric generator are water or water vapour. The other great advantage of fuel cells is that they can be built to virtually any scale (from a few Watts to a few Megawatts) while still maintaining their very high efficiency.

Petrol generators (the smallest is just under 1kW) are very inefficient at part load - as low as 5% in some cases. So there is no benefit in using a high efficiency floodlight instead of a conventional tungsten floodlight with a petrol or diesel generator - the fuel consumption per hour would only be reduced by a small amount. While other technologies, such as lighting, computing and visual displays, have made big improvements in efficiency (ie they do the same work as before but use much less energy), petrol and diesel generators have not downsized to match the reduced power requirement of many loads. Hydrogen units have the benefits of scalability too, so they can be made to provide power for small, medium or large loads.

Hydrogen fuel cells are silent, so they can be used in situations where noise is an issue - for example in residential areas at night. And because they do not emit any potentially toxic fumes, like carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide, they are ideally suited to work where these pollutants could become a problem.

BOC is keen to promote the use of hydrogen fuel cell technology in early applications, particularly where it can provide real benefits and has been working on the development of a small portable generator based on a hydrogen fuel cell. It has all the benefits of hydrogen technology being very quiet, very clean and with a much lower carbon footprint than a conventional generator, particularly at low power. The output power from the new BOC unit is ideally suited to light weight, energy efficient loads with lower power demands or where power is needed in short bursts (eg power tools) and it will be a cost effective solution that can power a wide range of off-grid applications including lighting, remote monitoring, power tools, visual displays, backup power and many more.

Stewart Dow
Packaged Energy Manager
BOC