Special Report: Early testing has proved that Titan Hydrogen’s fuel cell enhancement technology delivers significantly higher voltages compared with regular fuel cells.
The early work by the Queensland University of Technology on the company’s high performance, low-temperature hydrogen fuel cell found that it produced significantly higher voltage compared with a standard Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cell operating at the same current density.
That’s a significant endorsement of Titan Hydrogen’s (ASX: technology, which seeks to increase the capacity of fuel cells by up to 60%, as it means that its improved fuel cells will be able to deliver more power compared to traditional PEM fuel cells of the same power density.
Common PEM fuel cells have low efficiency, converting less than 40% of the energy of the supplied hydrogen into electricity.
Improving the efficiency of fuel cells will increase the driving range of a fuel cell electric vehicle and reduce the number of refuelling stations required, both of which will serve to lower the cost of adopting hydrogen as a transport fuel.
“Titan Hydrogen is at the forefront of exciting breakthrough technology that will enable the wider use of hydrogen fuel cells and accelerate the implementation of global decarbonisation strategies,” chairman David Vinson said.
“We are encouraged by these early-stage results and look forward to further validation of the novel approach we are following.”
Testing will now determine if the benefit demonstrated in the laboratory within a single cell to small fuel cell stacks can operate for extended periods with sustained high performance and minimal cell performance degradation.
QUT partnership
The QUT has a long history of helping find solutions to industry problems through its electrochemical research.
Working with the university ensures that the development of Titan’s technology is supported by state-of-the-art advanced electrochemical systems and a new scanning electrochemical system that has the ability to measure electrochemical and corrosion events on the micron scale.
This research is led by Dr Andrew Dicks, in collaboration with Associate Professor Geoffrey Will, using advanced measurement systems.
Dicks noted that any improvement in conversion efficiency is good news for the low-temperature fuel cell market.
Source: This article has originally appeared on Stockhead.