Protonex awards Millennium U.S. military fuel cell subcontract

Millennium Cell (NASDAQ: MCEL), a developer of hydrogen battery technology, has been awarded a subcontract by Protonex Technology (LSE: PTX) to jointly develop a fuel system for long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) missions.

As the prime contractor for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Protonex is developing a UAV power system that will integrate Hydrogen on Demand® technology with a high power fuel cell system designed to increase current UAV flight times from under two hours to over six hours.

The high-performance fuel cell power system is to address the rapidly growing segment of military UAVs designed for surveillance, search and rescue, chemical-biological monitoring and other critical missions requiring extended flight times.

Protonex is working with UAV manufacturers to integrate its high-performance power solution to meet the demand for significantly longer flight durations with greater payload than what is currently available with existing battery-powered systems.

“This is a mission critical power application that is not well-served by existing battery technology and provides us both with an excellent early market opportunity to integrate and incorporate our solution,” said Adam Briggs, President, Millennium Cell.

Millennium Cell develops hydrogen battery technology through a patented chemical process that stores and delivers hydrogen energy to power portable devices. The borohydride-based technology can be scaled to fit any application requiring high energy density for a long run time in a compact space, the company said.

Protonex develops and manufactures compact, lightweight and high performance fuel cell systems for portable power applications in the ten to 500-watt range.

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