By Nicholas Chambers

   Colorado has everything needed to grow a world-class fuel cell industry.  With 28 businesses that have an interest in fuel cells and 3 active fuel cell developers in the Front Range, Colorado is the place to be for cutting edge, energy-related research and development.  At the junction of this R&D and further commercialization efforts is the Colorado Fuel Cell Center (CFCC), located in the General Research Laboratory on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.
            The CFCC facility was completed in March of 2006 for the State of Colorado under the Governor’s Office of Energy Management and Conservation (OEMC).  The Gas Technology Institute provides operational management under contract from the OEMC, while the Colorado School of Mines, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Versa Power Systems, a fuel cell manufacturer in Littleton, also provide partnership.
The CFCC operates with a three-fold mission by providing state leadership in fuel cell technology development and application.  Secondly, it promotes a better understanding of the benefits of fuel cell technology through public education and outreach, and lastly, the CFCC fosters economic development through partnership with small businesses and local industry.
Now, what’s the fuel in a fuel cell?  Typically, one would associate hydrogen with fuel cells, which can be correct depending on the type of fuel cell, but they can be much more versatile.  “That leads to the biggest lesson about fuel cells,” says CFCC’s Executive Director, Dr. Robert Remick.  “Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not a fuel source.”  That means that some sort of energy has to be expended first in order to create the hydrogen to utilize.  Thus, this is a component of why the hydrogen economy has been slow to take off—hydrogen handling, storage, and use require an entire new infrastructure.
Renewable, solar hydrogen production options do exist, however, including photovoltaic induced electrolysis, where water is electrically split into hydrogen and oxygen.  Yet, it is currently more valuable to have that electricity stay in the grid as electricity than use it for hydrogen production. 
Wind electrolysis is also a viable option for hydrogen.  Xcel Energy and NREL are working on a wind for hydrogen research site, but again, wind produced electricity is cheaper than fossil fuel electricity and might be more valuable to stay as electricity.  If you choose to produce hydrogen from wind energy, then you are still left with the unique issues of storage and distribution, explains Dr. Remick.
Consequently, the task getting fuel cells on the market in earnest require fuels whose production and distribution infrastructures are already present.  These are the hydrocarbons that have built the industrial era.  In a fuel cell application, though, we can achieve better efficiency and cleaner emissions, namely that of water vapor and carbon dioxide.  This array of fuels includes methane (biogas), gasoline, natural gas, propane, diesel, kerosene, coal gas, ethanol, syn-gas from gasification of biomass, and military logistic fuels.  The cells that operate on these fuels are usually high-temperature models with current market production units having molten carbonate or solid-oxide ceramic electrolytes and non-noble metal catalysts.  Other lower temperature cells can have alkaline or phosphoric acid electrolytes.
The most common low temperature fuel cells that utilize pure hydrogen and create pure water as a byproduct are called Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) Fuel Cells.  These are what the space shuttles have used for years in space to create electricity and drinking water.  The transportation industry is utilizing PEMs to get fuel cell cars into the consumer circuit.  Methanol is a liquid fuel that can also be used in PEMs and is being used to power laptops, cell phones, and other small gadgetry.  “The effect these items will have on the energy crisis,” Remick says, “is absolutely zero, but at least they will be in the marketplace for the public to begin to understand and familiarize themselves with them.”
As far as the ideal renewable fuel to power fuel cells, according to Remick, are fuels that can be derived from waste products.  “The best way to get fuel cell technology into the marketplace is to reduce the cost and availability of their fuel,” he says.   Among these Remick is talking about landfill methane, syngas from the gasification of biomass and/or municipal waste, and the biogas from anaerobic digestion of municipal wastewater and/or animal wastes.  These gases can be available at every human city, town, and countryside and can be used, with perhaps some cleaning, directly in well-proven high temperature fuel cells.  Methane from landfills or off-shore methane hydrates that can and are being released into the atmosphere, have even more importance to capture for fuel use because methane is 30 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. 
Then, the question remains as to how the price of the cells themselves can come down.  This is a matter of the manufacturing process, where speed, methods, and part numbers need to be streamlined to enable mass production.  “Like automobiles, fuel cells need to hit the automated assembly line,” Remick says.
The imminent transition into a new technological era will be accompanied by a grand caveat that Dr. Remick and this author feel is of utmost importance.  First, conservation and a shift of existing practices where, for example, that gallon saved positively offsets the gross gallons formerly needed.  Basing future consumption on the habits developed during the era of cheap and subsidized fossil fuels is quite erroneous at best.   Secondly, an increase in efficiency that will allow us to get twice the amount of energy from the same amount of fuel.  It is time to get the efficiency secrets out of the dusty file cabinets in the dungeons of Big Oil and into the market.  Together, these two important themes, conservation and efficiency, should allow us to get four times the amount of productivity out of the same amount of fuel. 
Remick’s idea on how a society can get a start on this is carpooling: a citizen’s war on terror effort.  Sweden, he also notes, has an active advertising campaign directed at the youth to increase the allure of efficient and “green” cars, in effect making machines that are in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol rather “macho.”  American advertising has some things to learn.
“Stick it to OPEC—carpool,” Remick says. ]