Thursday, July 06, 2006
At a standstill: GM explores stationary power applications for automotive fuel cell development
The road to the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles has taken an interesting turn.
On Tuesday, February 10, 2004, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Texas Governor Rick Perry threw the switch on the first of some 400 to 500 General Motor's PEM automotive fuel cell power modules that will serve as stationary power plants, making electricity for Dow Chemical's Freeport, Texas, manufacturing facility.
This initial stack, mounted inside of a 40-ft. trailer and monitored remotely from GM's Honeoye Falls, N.Y., fuel cell research and development center, will serve as the test module, making sure that the units will run properly on the hydrogen produced by Dow. If all goes as planned, this 75 kW unit will be replaced this summer with another trailer housing the first industrial scale unit, made up of 14 modules capable of generating 1 MW of electricity. The final goal is to have 400 to 500 power modules generating 35 MW of electricity--enough to power 25,000 homes, yet still only two percent of the total electricity used by the Dow facility.
The trailer is parked in the facilities power station that currently uses cogeneration to produce all of the steam and electricity for Dow's largest facility with 75 production plants covering some 30-sq.ml.
You might ask yourself what would bring the world's largest auto manufacturer and the world's largest chemical producer together to advance fuel cell technology. The answer to that question is a commercially viable agreement that was made in hydrogen heaven.
Hydrogen is a byproduct of several of Dow's manufacturing operations and up until now, the 'fuel' in fuel cell was piped to the power station and used to heat boilers for making steam, sold off to companies like Air Products for resale to industry or vented into the atmosphere. Now some of that hydrogen will be used to run the GM fuel cells.
"We started talking to Dow in late 2002," says Timothy E. Vail, director fuel cell commercialization, GM fuel cell activity, "and it's kind of an interesting mix. Dow needed to get more value from its hydrogen strength and we needed a place to put our technology."
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