The U.S. Department of Energy's SECA program administered by the National
Energy Technology Laboratory approves Acumentrics for a fully funded second
budget period and comments on the company's cost reduction achievements in
WESTWOOD, Mass., March 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Acumentrics Corporation announced today that the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy's Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance "SECA" has approved Acumentrics' advancement into their second budget period six months early, while increasing the company's role to a fully-funded industry partner under the SECA program. This comes as a result of "impressive technical achievement and outstanding schedule progress," as stated in a recent Department of Energy report.
In 2003, Acumentrics became one of only six companies in the world to be awarded and begin work under the U.S. Department of Energy's SECA industry program. Acumentrics received a $74,000,000 cost share grant to reduce the cost of its proprietary anode supported Tubular Solid Oxide Fuel Cell "T-SOFC" technology. This technology has been demonstrated to offer significant advantages over flat plate and cathode supported solid oxide fuel cells with regard to sealing and rapid start. The program is scheduled for 9 years, targets small-scale 3-10 kilowatt units and has a cost target of $400 per kilowatt at completion.
The following is a brief list of Acumentrics' achievements in the first six months under the DOE SECA Program:
* Demonstrated stable cell performance over 4,000 hours with average degradation rates below 0.25 % per 500 hours, nearly achieving the 2010
Phase III SECA goal of 0.1 % per 500 hours.
* Developed and applied steam reforming technology to advance their SOFC gross stack efficiency up to 49 %.
* Developed a tube sealing process that can reduce the connection cost from greater than $1,300 per kilowatt to less than $1 per kilowatt.
* Reduced stack cost by demonstrating an increase in 20 % power per unit stack volume over previous designs and a decrease in manifold count by 17 % for the same number of cells.
* Developed and verified inverter efficiencies of over 94 % including the transformer.
* Reduced the electrolyte sintering-temperature from 1,500 to 1,450 C with solid evidence this should drop to or below 1400 C in the coming months to lower fabrication costs.
"Acumentrics is very grateful to the U.S. Department of Energy for their SECA program support," said Gary A. Mook, Acumentrics' President & CEO. "Having not accessed the public market to date, our team has had to work faster and smarter to sustain and advance our technological leadership. We have also had to maximize the impact of each matching funding dollar in our drive for profitability in 2004."
About Acumentrics: Acumentrics Corporation, a privately owned company founded in 1994 and based in Westwood, Massachusetts, is a leading solid oxide fuel cell developer of 1 to 10 kilowatt residential to industrial use remote off-grid and grid-connected distributed electricity and heat generation products. Acumentrics' unique and patented high temperature tubular solid oxide fuel cell generation units are designed to run directly from natural gas, propane and other hydrocarbon fuels (such as coal-derived hydrogen based fuels) at standard delivery pressures. This potentially world- wide unique and distinguishing feature is based on a highly simplified in-tube fuel reforming method that negates the need for complex external or co-packaged high-cost reformation systems.
Acumentrics' fuel cells produce essentially zero harmful emissions, noise or vibration, and are being designed for outdoor long-term continuous duty as well as cyclical use.
About SECA: The Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance is a collaborative effort coordinated by two of the U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratories -- the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). SECA is supported by the DOE's Office of Fossil Energy through NETL's Strategic Center for Coal, and actively coordinates with other government agencies. This alliance of U.S. industry, universities, and other research organizations, represents a new model for joint government and private industry technology development. More information about the SECA program is available on the Internet at www.seca.doe.gov.
SOURCE Acumentrics Corporation