thePetroStreet

Fuel cell is a very interesting, effective and clean way to produce electricity using hydrogen based fuels. However industrial usage of this technology is a big question. If any one has any type of experience related to industrial usage of fuel cell, kindly do share along their feasibility.

Very interesting question, but the answer will have a large number of "ifs" and "buts".

Fuel Cells promise power generation with high efficiency and low environmental impact. But, due to the high cost of exotic materials needed for the catalysts, their cost currently is prohibitively high. In the US and EU, where heavy tax subsidies are available, this kind of investment might have merit, if the technology can be scaled up accordingly. But, in third-world countries, or even oil-rich gulf region, such technology might not be very attractive.

Fuel Cells gained popularity when they were first deployed in NASA space missions, around 50 years ago. Since then, while several development and application platforms have been developed, full-scale commercial application has always remained "10-years away"

Initial commercial applications focused on several hundred kW to low MW capacity plants, and were also mostly suitable for cogeneration plants. Companies such as Ballard, UTC Fuel Cells (formerly known as International Fuel Cells), Fuel Cell Energy and Siemens have done a large amount of research, development and commercial deployment of fuel cell power plants ranging from 200 kW to 3MW. These plants can be setup in a distributed generation environment to provide power in the tens of megawatts, with the technologies ranging from Polymer Electrolyte Fuels Cells (PEMFC), Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cells (PAFC), Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells (MCFC) and Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC).

A lot of thrust has also been placed on using fuel cells for vehicle motive power, and several examples have been developed, and even marketed in select countries as production models.

In short, Fuel Cells have gained tremendous popularity over the last two decades, and have a large number of power players interested (GE, Siemens, UTC, GM, Ford etc). However, a large number of companies in the fuel cell business have gone bankrupt or bought out by larger players. While the feasibility has been demonstrated over and over again, it will required a paradigm shift in the way we think of energy to make fuel cells truly work (such as hydrogen infrastructure). In the meantime, fuel cells remain big ticket items which are hard to justify on an IRR basis in areas of the world where traditional energy carriers are more readily available.

I would recommend you refer to fuelcells.org and search on google for Fuel Cell Handbook for further details.

Such a wonderful sharing, thanks proeng. And yeap, we are currently referring that book "Fuel Cell Handbook" by Parsons Inc. Let me give a little background also; we actually are working on a power-plant as a whole, using municipal waste. as you may aware that contains many other metallic oxides also with very fine dust. The easiest way is to install a boiler and stream driven generator-turbine. But to optimize we are also looking at other options at pre-feasibility stage. That include gas turbine and fuel cell technology.
Anyhow thanks for sharing your knowledge. Before going in fuel cell technologies, no doubt the pre-treatment of bio gas will be the big investment that make fuel cells out of scope.