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Media Information Press Release July 15, 2006 Lucerne Fuel Cell Forum a Complete Success Subhash Singhal receives the Christian Friedrich Schoenbein Medal of Honor More than 470 participants from all parts of the World made this year's Lucerne Fuel Cell Forum a memorable event. The charming Swiss town of Lucerne was host to a four day fuel cell meeting with two parallel conferences, a tutorial and an exhibition of fuel cell products and components. The "7th European SOFC Forum" chaired by Professor John Kilner of Imperial College offered 54 technical papers and over 150 poster presentations. The SOFC technology drew more attention than ever and now appears to take the lead in the fuel cell areana. The Conference CD containing the full length manuscripts of all 240 oral and poster presentations can now be ordered (www.efcf.com).
In "Fuel Cells for a Sustainable World", the applications-oriented second symposium chaired by Professor Lars Sjunnesson of E.ON Nordic AB, fuel cell operators presented reports of amazing success of their PAFC, MCFC and SOFC installations. The 200 kW PC25 unit at the Central Park Police Station in New York has already logged 65,000 hours with the original stack and continues to run well. Stack replacement, originally planned at 40,000 hours, is now scheduled for 80,000 hours of operation. More recent PC 25 units have reached 55,000 hours and are still going strong. In fact, United Technology, the developer of the PC 25 will soon return to the market with redesigned PAFC units after some years of experimenting with PEM systems for stationary applications. Also, the 200 kW Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell systems of Fuelcell Energy in the US and their German partner MTU have demonstrated impressive performance. Some unites have already logged over 35,000 hours. The same is true for the 100 kW Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Co-generator of Siemens-Westinghouse. It has been moved from its first location in the Netherlands to Germany and is now running again in Italy with the total running time approaching 30,000 hours. All successful fuel cell systems run on natural gas, biogas, digester gas or methanol. In light of this success of PAFC, MCFC and SOFC installations with sustainable fuels, next year's Fuel Cells for a Sustainable World will be supported by a broad discussion about implementation of sustainable energy and energy efficiency technologies. The Lucerne Fuel Cell Forum 2008 will be fully devoted to SOFC issues. The event ended with the award of the Christian Friedrich Schoenbein Medal of Honor to Dr. Subhash Singhal, Battelle Fellow and Director of Fuel Cell Research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the USA in recognition of his outstanding contributions to SOFC science and technology, and for creating the International Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Symposium. Christian Friedrich Schoenbein, a Swiss chemist of the 19th century discovered the fuel cell effect in 1838 and communicated his observations to W. R. Grove who later invented the fuel cell power source. The team around Professor Ludwig Gauckler of the ETH Zurich / Switzerland received the Silver Medal for its outstanding contributions to SOFC science while the Bronze Medal was awarded to a team of the University at Bilbao / Spain for their excellent poster contribution. Copyright free. File copy requested >> back to Media Overview |
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