TOPIC 'Fuel Cells' on Dec 23, 2008 (CET)
Another Use For Fuel Cells
Waste2Tricity is a new company with big ideas of turning household and commercial waste into hydrogen-rich gas that will produce electricity. This plan to turn waste into electricity in the U.K. will use an advanced gasification system that will, in three to five years, operate on fuel cells. In the interim, alkaline fuel cells will be used to make the transformation.
Waste2Tricity has former U.K. defence minister, Lord Moonie, for its Chairman-elect and Tim Yeo, former environment minister, on its board. Experts in the fuel cell industry and the waste management industry are also part of the company.
The new business expects its first gasification plant to necessitate £50 million in capital and in the beginning will utilize a combustion engine instead of fuel cells to exchange the hydrogen waste “syngas” into electricity. However, fuel cells are anticipated to be much more efficient and they are planned to be incorporated into the process as soon as full commercialization of is available.
The company’s business plan projects that a series of waste-to-hydrogen-to-electricity plants will likely be able to produce between 2 MW and 5 MW of power from 50,000 tons of feedstock waste per year. Adding the efficiency of fuel cells to the process will boost the effectiveness of the design by 60 percent when compared to the combustion engine and by 130 percent when compared to a system operating on a steam turbine. The fuel cells are also expected to improve conditions of the process so there will be no fly ash and fewer emissions involved.
The gasification process utilizes the method of heating solid waste in a controlled situation, thereby causing a “hydrogen-rich synthetic gas (‘syngas’)” to be produced, emitting just inert slag. Syngas can then be used by the method of burning to generate electricity.
Lord Moonie has stated that Waste2Tricity’s systems will have “significant environmental and cost benefits over other methods of electricity generation.”
Sherry Irvin
on behalf of the
BascoTec Internet Limited
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