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Weekly UpdatesNEW ORLEANS -- Atop craggy hills in Afghanistan, soldiers manning remote observation posts are currently using fuel cells to power their lights, radios and other electronic devices.
"This is the ideal scenario for fuel cell use," said Michael Dominick of the Army's Communications-Electronics, Research, Development and Engineering Center.
"This is not an exercise or demonstration. These fuel cells are actually being used in theater."
This news comes as the Obama administration announced plans to spend $20 million of Recovery Act funding on military fuel cell technology. The Defense Department's director of defense research and engineering (DDR&E) office will be spearheading these efforts.
For years, technologists have been touting the potential of fuel cell use in the military as the number of devices requiring battery power has proliferated.
Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that combine hydrogen and oxygen to make electricity. The oxygen comes from the air, but the hydrogen must come from a second source--most often fossil fuels. They can be small enough to power electronic devices worn by troops, or large enough to power camps not connected to an electrical grid.
They have faced several hurdles, though. JP8, which is the military's fuel of choice, doesn't work well as a source of hydrogen. The technology is relatively new and not widely used. And the devices on the market need to be ruggedized for the military.
Many of these issues are spelled out in a fuel cell technology roadmap that is being published this month by the joint defense manufacturing technology panel's power sources technical working group, which comprises members of all four services and the Defense Logistics Agency.
A renewed focus on the war in Afghanistan may push the technology into widespread use as war fighters require more power for longer missions. Remote outposts, where everything must be backpacked in, and soldiers remain for days at a time, spurred an order under the Rapid Fielding Initiative to deliver the technology, Dominick said at the National Defense Industrial Association Power Expo here.
"We feel this is a very significant event since this is a real mission application," he said.
Authors of the fuel cell roadmap see the Recovery Act funding efforts as a potential breakthrough.
"There is a customer pull on this. And if the technology is successful, they will buy" fuel cells, said Marc Giegter, a project leader in the CERDEC Army power division. "The time has come for the small fuel cell to make its debut into the Army inventory," he added.
Fuel cells could potentially solve one of the major battlefield energy problems, their proponents have said. The weight foot soldiers or marines must bear has increased along with the number of electronic devices they must carry. Fuel cells may offer a solution.
For short missions, standard issue batteries may suffice. In Iraq, war fighters on patrol do not typically leave for long periods. They can take rechargeable or disposable batteries along and return to their home base in time to be resupplied. But that may not be the case in Afghanistan, where roads are poor and patrols can last for days.
Adele Radcliff, of the office of the secretary of defense's manufacturing technology (Mantech) program, said the $20 million comes on top of an additional $49 million for a fuel cell manufacturing technology initiative.
The office "never has put out that much money for a single alternative energy program," she added.
The initiative will include funds to purchase hundreds of wearable fuel cells and larger man-portable systems that can be carried into the field to supply power to squads.
The first broad agency announcement on a tactical level fuel cell system should come out in late July, Giegter said. This program will receive the bulk of the fuel cell stimulus funds. It will seek a manportable system that can be carried into areas where there is no electrical grid. It would be used to recharge batteries and supply power for these small units in remote locations.
The idea is to boost the manufacturing base, he said. The more units that are produced, the more dependable they will become. And the more robust the supply chain becomes, the cheaper it will be for the military to buy the fuel cells, he said.
Radcliff said: "I think this says a lot for where the department is headed. It's not just a fading topic du jour. It shows a large commitment at the senior level of where we need to go."
Giegter said the fuel cell technology roadmap, which is now in its final draft, will speak to the need to boost the manufacturing base.
Fuel ceils need to be more dependable, he said. One way to do that is to manufacture them in large numbers so engineers can obtain a better idea of what their shortcomings are.
Radcliff said: "Many of the reasons why you don't have the technology ... is because you can't stabilize the manufacturing processes to make them affordable enough to create market penetration."
The main challenges the roadmap spells out are: ruggedization for the military environment; slow warm up times; and reliability--or the time between failures, salct Prank Sokolowski, an industrial engineer at the Defense Contract Management Agency's industrial analysis center, and a co-author of the roadmap.
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"You have to build a lot of them to get them reliable," he said. There is precedence in the military energy field. Lithium ion batteries began as a military application. But it wasn't until the technology was adopted by the commercial market that the cost per unit began to drop.
"We don't see the military by itself driving that cost down," said Giegter.
Dismounted war Fighters could use wearable fuel cells which use propane or methanol that come in cartridges as a source of hydrogen.
However, this will require adding another fuel source to the battlefield. The military--in order to make life simpler for logisticians--settled on JP8 as the sole source of fuel to power its trucks, aircraft and generators. In order to pull the hydrogen from a fossil fuel, it must first pass through a catalytic reformer. But JP8 contains high amounts of sulfur. This impurity eventually clogs and "poisons" the reformer and renders it useless.
Dominick said the cell poisoning issue remains a major hurdle. There are still ongoing efforts to see if JP8 can be reformed, but a solution might be years away. For the short term, other fuels are being used. "No one fuel technology has demonstrated it will be the sole solution for the military," he added.
Methanol, propane and ethanol are all potential sources of hydrogen. Last October, DDR&E ran a wearable power competition with a $1 million top prize for the lightest system that could provide up to 20 watts of power for 96 hours. Competitors could use either batteries, fuel cells or combinations of the two. The top three winners were all fuel cells. The First and third-place prizes used methanol and the second-place winner used propane.
Dominick said propane has one advantage because it is so widely available. The military could potentially take the fuel cells to a foreign country and then purchase propane locally.
CERDEC, in an effort to boost the industry, has awarded contracts to all the major players including UltraCell for its XX25 fuel cell and South Korea's Samsung, which also has a methanol-based fuel cell. Adaptive Material Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., winner of the second prize in the wearable power competition, has also received some CERDEC funding.
"Many of our current systems are showing increased reliability," Dominick said. Along with wearable power, CERDEC sees promise in the man-portable category that DDR&E intends to invest heavily in, he said. These one-kilowatt systems can be a bridge between batteries and JP8 fueled generators, he said.
One start-up company believes it has the solution to the JP8 problem.
Global Energy Innovations has developed a fuel cell stack that it says can handle any hydrogenbased energy source without poisoning the fuel cell. It manages this by heating up the systems to 160 degrees centigrade. By doing so, it tolerates 15,000 times more impurities than low temperature fuel cells, said Eric Schmidt, the company's business development manager.
The GEI-X-5 system separates the hydrogen from the fuel using high temperature steam. Waste water that is normally produced by this process is recycled. There are virtually no emissions, he claimed. The company has added shielding to the system to reduce the heat signature. The military normally doesn't want to run "hot" systems in situations where the enemy can detect soldiers' presence from heat signatures.
The one possible flaw is that the system takes 20 to 30 minutes to "warm up," he said. GEI has corrected this by adding a lithium ion battery that can provide up to 2 kilowatts of power for 30 minutes.
GEI isn't the only company pursuing the heated fuel cell solution. Both the Army and the Navy have recognized the promise of the technology. The Office of Naval Research conducted an industry day for high-temperature fuel ceils last year.
Schmidt said the company is just now introducing the systems to the military market. It hasn't received any contracts yet. "We're continuously modifying, downsizing and really getting this down to a package that will benefit the user."
As far as tapping into a commercial market, a German company, Smart Fuel Cells, has been selling the technology to European recreational vehicle enthusiasts. Christian Boehm, president of the company's U.S. division, said the start-up is growing rapidly. It sold 16 fuel cells in 2002 to boaters and campers. By 2008, the company sold 12,200 traits. In the first quarter this year, it has sold about 13,000 fuel cells. It also supplies the methanol tanks that feed the cells, he said. The system costs $3,500 for commercial systems, and the methanol containers that provide the fuel can be obtained for $20 to $30.
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