FuelCell Energy military contract refreshed

Fuel cell developer FuelCell Energy (NasdaqNM: FCEL) today announced $1 million in new funding from the U.S. Army.

The company has been working to scale up a new product that separates hydrogen from a gas mixture while generating electricity.

The Electrochemical Hydrogen Separation (EHS) system, developed for the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (ERDC-CERL), is to enable the pure, extracted gas to be sold as fuel for hydrogen vehicles or for industrial uses.

A prototype, started in 2006, successfully operated for over 6,000 hours.

Compared to conventional hydrogen separation processes, FuelCell Energy’s EHS system offered up to 50 percent savings in operating costs, the company said.

And because of the efficiencies of the fuel cell plant, CO2 emissions associated with hydrogen production were significantly reduced, it claimed.

The new $1.225 million Phase II contract is expected to be complete by mid-2008.

FuelCell Energy is a leader in the development and production of stationary fuel cells for commercial, industrial, municipal and utility customers. Its flagship products are its Direct FuelCell® (DFC) power plants, which provide distributed generation of hydrogen and electricity.

The systems are designed to operate using renewable fuel sources such as anaerobic digester gas from industrial or municipal wastewater processing, as well as conventional fuels like natural gas and propane.

It competes with companies like HydroGen Corp. and UTC Power.

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