Daily Update from the Fuel Cell Seminar - Day 2

Daily Update from the Fuel Cell Seminar - Day 2

Publication Date:13-November-2006
06:30 PM US Eastern Timezone
Source:Fuel Cell Today-Kerry-Ann Adamson, Gemma Crawley and Mike Hugh
Day 2 Morning Plenary Session Day 2 got off to an early start at 8am
with the Plenary Session. The Session room was fairly well filled, with
around 300 people in attendance. After opening remarks from the Chair
of the 2006 Technical Programme Committee Sunita Satayapal and a
welcome by Karl Stahlkhopf of the Hawaiian Electric Company, the Fuel
Cell Seminar Award was presented to John O'Sullivan.

John then gave his keynote speech on his views of the progress made and
still to be made in the wider fuel cell industry. His speech focussed
on what has gone well in fuel cell development, what has not gone well,
and what we still need to do. Successes to date were mainly technical
in nature, and he singled out the vast improvements in energy density
for special mention. Companies which he thought had led the way in
early fuel cell commercialisation were UTC and Siemens Westinghouse.
Areas where with hindsight things could have been done differently were
the habitually over optimistic tone of fuel cell developers, and the
fragmentation of technical efforts which has led in some cases to a
misallocation of R&D funding. Looking to the future, he said the focus
should now be on the exploitation of low or zero carbon fuels for
hydrogen sourcing, including the use of nuclear power. Finally, John
highlighted a need for a more comprehensive National Energy Policy in
the US which was geared towards supporting integrated hydrogen and fuel
cell programmes than at the present time.

John was followed by the presentation of a number of awards for papers
and posters, and then a video presentation was shown by Professor
Thorsteinn Sigfusson of the University of Iceland. Thorsteinn was
unable to attend the Seminar because of a recent family bereavement but
he was still able to record and send over an admirably upbeat
presentation, which turned out to be the highlight of the morning. He
called for a renewed effort to achieve "Hytopia" - a hydrogen
based economy. He said we need to progress from the Carnot era to the
Gibbs era, referring to the rules of thermo-combustion and
electrochemical combustion respectively. He talked about the progress
made in his home country of Iceland towards realising this vision. It
is always good to hear these positive speeches from time to time, and
this one was all the more remarkable given the situation in which
Thorsteinn recorded his presentation.

Koji Kuramoto of METI in Japan presented the diverse R&D efforts
currently underway and planned in his country. The Japanese approach to
fuel cell technology development is highly structured, well funded and
has clear targets. He talked about the current and past priority given
to residential and transport PEM-based development, and said that there
would in the near future be a new focus on materials research into
hydrogen storage and transportation.

Next was Simon Westinghouse from Australia, leader of the HyFLEET: CUTE
project. He concentrated on what he said was a frequently overlooked
aspect of deploying fuel cell technologies - the people that would
ultimately adopt them. His assertion was, he said, supported by the
Stern Report, recently published in the UK, which emphasised the role
in gaining the support of the public in order to keep the cost of the
hydrogen transition down.

The last speaker was Dustin Shindo of local company Hoku Scientific. He
outlined his company's history from its early beginnings, where the
laboratory was in the CTO's kitchen and the hydrogen used for testing
was stored under his bed! Hoku, meaning "star" or "guiding
light" in Hawaiian, is now one of two Hawaiian companies listed on
NASDAQ and have begun to diversify their work into materials and
photovoltaic cells as well as the core business of PEM membranes.

These were all interesting presentations, and a solid start to the
second day of the Seminar.



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