Why choose Alkaline Fuel Cells?
At AFC Energy we have a highly skilled team of scientist and engineers whom have between them attained a great deal of experience in a wide variety of generic fuel cell technologies including PEM, SOFC, and DMFC and Alkaline technologies. Read about how they compare.
This experience was obtained both with integration work as well as system and electrode development.
We’re almost unique in the field because we have seen and worked intensively with a variety of fuel cell technologies and systems, giving us a very solid basis of judgement as to their respective strengths and weaknesses.
Since we were not involved in any particular technology of our own account, we applied the technologies where they were best employed according to their characteristics and properties.
Prior to starting our design and development work we carried out a technical audit and a commercial audit to make sure that we were making the right choices.
At the end of the technical audit there were a number of aspects that made the choice simple for us:
- Alkaline fuel cells have one of the highest system efficiencies of all fuel cell types.
- Operating temperature is directly linked to material and manufacturing costs i.e. the lower the operating temperature, the lower the cost of the materials needed to create a working and reliable electrode and system.
- The fact that Alkaline technology can work perfectly well without the use of precious metals is an insurance against aggressive price hiking in the industry.
- Alkaline technology is the longest established technology having been invented in 1839.
- Alkaline technology is the most reliable of all fuel cell technologies having been selected for both the space and submarine applications over other available technologies.
- Having liquid electrolyte means that we can control the temperature of the system in a cheap and efficient manner.
- Liquid electrolyte also allows us to deal with any CO2 contamination much easier.
- Alkaline fuel cells have a very simple, low component count and architecture