significant durability challenges. Yet in
February, after eight years of development, Silicon Valley start-up Bloom Energy, located in Sunnyvale, Calif., officially
unveiled its Bloom Box solid oxide fuel
cell, which the company claims uses
low-cost materials and runs on a wider
range of fuels than other fuel cell types.
Making Economic Sense
Several factors go into the decision of
whether to install a fuel cell, according
to Dan Rastler, program manager for the
energy storage and distributed genera-
tion program at the Electric Power Re-
search Institute, Palo Alto, Calif. Capi-
tal costs of fuel cells are relatively high
compared to the retail cost of electricity
from the grid, he said. In making a deci-
sion, manufacturers need to compare
the retail rate (wholesale power costs
as well as transmission and delivery
costs) of power from the electric grid
with the cost of purchasing, installing,
and running the fuel cell.
Pepperidge Farm. Pepperidge Farm Inc. has installed
two hydrogen fuel cells at its Bloomfield, Conn., bakery, which
opened in 2003, replacing the company’s original bakery in
Norwalk, Conn. (see lead image). One of the tasks when
designing the new plant was to investigate distributed power
generation to improve the reliability of its power supply and
save energy costs, according to Harry Pettit, manager of systems and infrastructure engineering, who proposed the idea
of installing the first fuel cell and was deeply involved in the
second fuel cell installation.
The company installed the first fuel cell, a 250-kW unit
manufactured by FuelCell Energy, in 2006. It partnered with
Allentown, Pa.-based Pennsylvania Power and Light, which
owned the fuel cell, Pettit said. The unit was supported by the
Connecticut Clean Energy Fund. The company opted for a fuel
cell partly because of the funding and partly because of the
cost advantage in electric rates that the hydrogen fuel cell provided, he said. The fuel cell generated electricity for 12 cents
per k Wh, compared to 16 cents per k Wh off the grid.
Pepperidge Farm installed the second FuelCell Energy fuel
cell, which generates 1.2 MW of power, at the Bloomfield
bakery in 2008. This fuel cell supplies 700-degree-F exhaust
air that is captured to create steam. “We put in a heat recovery steam generator and use the steam for 99 percent of
the steam needs in the plant,” Pettit said. When the fuel cell
operates, the two boilers that were installed with the original
plant do not operate. In addition, 300 degrees F in excess heat
is used for thermal oxidizers which burn off volatile organic
compounds from the waste stream of the oven. The oxidizers
run at 1,600 degrees F. Pettit said the fuel cells run steadily.
The plant operates six days a week, with one day of scheduled
downtime. During that day, the fuel cells continue to run, exporting electricity back to the grid.
The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund contributed $3.5
million to the $6 million cost of the 1.2-MW system, which
Pepperidge Farms owns. Pettit estimated that the fuel cell will
Real-world Installations
be paid off in three years. “Without the incentives, we would
not have been able to do this,” he said.
Ford Motor Co. Ford has installed a 300-kW molten carbonate fuel cell, also manufactured by FuelCell Energy,
as part of its Fumes-to-Fuel system in its Oakville Assembly
Plant in Ontario, Canada (see Figure 3). Fumes-to-Fuel is a
demonstration project to convert the fumes from the plant’s
paint shop into a usable fuel that will power a fuel cell to generate electricity. Ford began work on the system in 2006 and
installed the fuel cell portion in 2008 and 2009.
Mark Wherrett, senior environmental engineer at Ford, explained that the Fumes-to-Fuel system introduces the solvent
fumes to a fluidized bed concentrator consisting of tiny carbon
beads. The solvent fumes attach to carbon in high concentrations.
The concentrated solvent is fed into a re-former that breaks
the carbon-hydrogen bonds into their original components and
puts them together as synthetic natural gas. The natural gas then
is fed into the fuel cell that produces electricity.
The Fumes-to-Fuel technology is still a work-in-progress.
Ford has commissioned the re-former; the next step is to
take the re-former’s output and bring it into the fuel cell. The
technology will be evaluated for potential implementation on
a larger scale. Theoretically, Fumes-to-Fuel will reduce carbon
dioxide emissions by 88 percent and eliminate nitrogen oxide
emissions compared to conventional technology that incinerates the solvents.
TST Inc. In 2006 TST Inc., a Fontana, Calif., producer
of secondary aluminum ingot and billet, installed two 250-k W
molten carbonate fuel cells from FuelCell Energy at its plant
in Southern California. The company received financial support
from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Diamond Bar, Calif., and the California Public Utility Commission’s
Self-Generation Incentive Program, Sacramento, Calif.
TST CEO Andrew Stein said the fuel cells, which were set up to
operate in parallel with the grid, supplied 50 percent of the plant’s
needs during peak power. The electricity was used to run blower
motors, fans to run heat-treatment furnaces, and shredders.
