The direct fuel cell status report and power plant designs for utility applications

The Energy Research Corporation (ERC) program has reached the stage of development where full scale stacks, the heart of the fuel cell power plant, are being tested to confirm component assembly techniques, fuel and oxidant manifolding, overall performance and endurance. These are necessary steps prior to our committing to manufacturing demonstration hardware. Concurrent to the technology development activity, ERC has been designing and evaluating total systems based on natural gas and coal gas schemes. The paper reviews the results of this work and the next steps to commercialize this advanced generation system.