FuelCell Energy Awarded $2.1 Million

money.cnn.com
March 10, 2010

DANBURY, Conn., March 10, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - - FuelCell Energy, Inc., a leading manufacturer of high efficiency ultra-clean power plants using renewable and other fuels for commercial, industrial, government, and utility customers, today announced subcontract awards totaling $2.1 million from Air Products. The prime contract to demonstrate a renewable hydrogen fueling station was awarded to Air Products by the California Air Resources Board and supported by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The project is to demonstrate an Air Products' concept which incorporates FuelCell Energy's DFC-H2® technology in a hydrogen fueling station. The DFC-H2® can produce clean power, heat and renewable hydrogen.

The hydrogen will supply the state-of-the-art hydrogen fueling station developed and to be installed by Air Products at the Orange County Sanitation District's (OCSD) wastewater treatment facility in Fountain Valley, California. The system will be fueled with biogas from wastewater treatment operations and produce 300 kWs of power and up to 300 pounds of hydrogen per day. This hydrogen could be used for early market fuel-cell applications such as back up power and forklifts and is sufficient to fuel roughly 100 fuel-cell cars. The electricity will be available for use by OCSD for its operations.

"The award of the prime contracts giving rise to the announced subcontracts is a clear acknowledgement by DOE and California of the importance of using a renewable resource such as biogas to generate energy," said Christopher Bentley, FuelCell Energy's Executive Vice President of Government Research & Development Operations. "Our research indicates that hydrogen efficiently produced as a byproduct by the DFC-H2® can be less costly than hydrogen produced by other methods and can enable the expansion of ultra-clean, hydrogen production systems worldwide, while providing the benefits of distributed power generation."

During the past two years under the ongoing DOE program, FuelCell Energy and Air Products have developed a co-production test unit and successfully validated the test unit in 2009 at FuelCell Energy's research and development facility. The test unit produced hydrogen and power meeting the predeployment testing objectives in advance of its siting at OCSD. Details on Air Products' hydrogen fueling station technologies are provided at www.airproducts.com/h2energy.