Fuel Cell Research Blooms At Sirti

Fuel cells are already generating some light at the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute.

Scientists dedicating the basement Energy Systems Laboratory on Monday said preliminary tests indicate some materials they have concocted outperform the industry benchmark, Nafion.

Test stations that technicians were assembling Monday will allow lab workers to refine their results and test new compounds more quickly, they said.

“These are kind of our first stabs at various different plastics,” said David DeVries, a doctoral student in electrical engineering at Washington State University.

Fuel cells like those used on spacecraft produce electricity using hydrogen. The fuel is ionized by a catalyst, with the protons passing through a plastic, or polymer, while the electrons produce a current.

Nafion, the polymer most widely used in fuel cells, is chemically related to Teflon.

The fuel-cell reaction is clean, but the electricity is expensive, in part because of the price I.E. Du Pont Nemours charges for Nafion.

In April, SIRTI and WP Laboratories, a subsidiary of Washington Water Power Co., launched a $2 million effort to find an alternative to Nafion.

They are also developing ways to mass produce the new fuel cells.

The cells could be used as a back-up source of energy for homes and businesses.

“It’s a commercialization project,” DeVries said of the SIRTI research. “We’re looking at everything.”

Across the room, Resource Associates representative Scott Hamilton said recreational vehicles could be a more down-to-earth market for fuel cells than the space shuttle.

His company is installing four different benchtesting stations that will allow researchers to put polymers and other cell components through ever more rigorous tests.

“It’s a staged approach,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a small loft, a group of Gonzaga University mechanical engineering students led by professor Doug Ramers are designing a process for manufacturing the polymer sandwiches that occupy fuel cell cores.

The team leaves for Connecticut today to visit the largest maker of commercial fuel cells in the country, International Fuel Cells Corp.

Bill Fuglevand, a WWP engineer, said the lab and ICF will be splitting a $4 million federal grant for study of how a hydrogen-based energy system would work, from product and storage of the gas, through distribution, to its use in fuel cells.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo