3M & Plug Power Sign Supply Agreement For Fuel Cell Units Being Sold In India
3M and Plug Power Inc. announced that they have entered into an exclusive commercial supply agreement for 3M membrane electrode assemblies (MEA), to be used as a critical component in Plug Power’s GenSys® proprietary proton exchange membrane (PEM) reformate stacks. The continuous run GenSys prime power fuel cell systems are being deployed into rural India and will replace diesel generators at remote telecommunication sites.
The design of the reformate stack allows customers to realize the economic and environmental benefits of fuel cells, while avoiding the logistics involved in transporting pure hydrogen to their remote cell sites. GenSys reforms Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) into a hydrogen-rich reformate that is converted into electricity in the fuel cell stack. The GenSys reformer design is also proprietary to Plug Power. With minor adjustments, Plug Power’s system can process a variety of hydrocarbon based fuel stocks such as natural gas.
In May 2009, WTTIL, the cell tower arm of Tata Teleservices Ltd., placed an order for 200 units to provide power at cell towers with no or extremely unreliable electric grid service. The initial 200 GenSys systems will be installed by the end of March, 2010 and the company expects to install approximately 1,000 systems by the end of the same year. Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (HPCL) will provide LPG fuel for the initial 200 installations. Plug Power and HPCL entered into a five-year fuel supply agreement in September of 2009.
Through several years of collaboration between 3M and Plug Power, and research and development support from the United States Department of Energy, Plug Power has successfully developed a robust stack designed to meet and exceed customer requirements. To date, Plug Power’s reformate stack designs have accumulated more than 200,000 in-application operating hours in hundreds of units at customer sites. As a result of this extensive in-application testing, the company has extended the stack life by 70%.
Plug Power’s reformate stack improves upon similar commercially available fuel cell stacks with a five percent increase in system efficiency. 3M and Plug Power will use the data and learning from field deployments to drive further improvements in MEA, fuel cell stack and system lifetime. In just five years, Plug Power has reduced the cost of its reformate fuel cell by approximately 70%, while increasing the power output by 20 percent. Plug Power has also streamlined its design and manufacturing processes, reducing assembly and test time by 60%.
3M is a developer and manufacturer of membrane electrode assemblies for proton exchange membrane fuel cells. 3M MEAs are based on a number of core 3M technology platforms, including fluoropolymers, nanotechnology and precision processing. The company’s dedicated fuel cell team is focused on addressing MEA related barriers to wide spread fuel cell commercialization including cost, durability and consistency. The MEAs developed for the GenSys stack incorporate a number of significant improvements over the previous generation of 3M MEAs. The U.S. Department of Energy has strongly supported 3M in its development efforts through a number of cost sharing projects and by providing common direction and targets to fuel cell component and system developers.
