Cummins Inc., Columbus, Ind., received two federal grants totaling $4.6 million to advance commercialization of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology, which could play a critical role in helping commercial and industrial customers reduce their carbon impact while providing energy resiliency and cutting costs.
SOFCs can convert fossil fuels into energy more efficiently than combustion-based processes and can also use low- and no-carbon fuels such as hydrogen to generate power. They are capable of converting significantly more of a fossil fuel’s energy into electricity while producing less heat-trapping gases and emissions than an internal combustion engine using a petroleum-based fuel, or a coal-burning power plant.
Advocates envision using SOFCs to regularly power major energy users like data centers, removing them from an increasingly over-burdened electrical grid.
The grants from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will help fund two projects demonstrating SOFCs’ potential. A second project funded with the help of a $2 million DOE grant will look at the cost, performance and reliability of a reversible fuel cell or R-SOFC.
R-SOFCs can run as a traditional SOFC or as a solid oxide electrolyzer cell (SOEC) that can split steam to separate hydrogen and oxygen.
The DOE grant proposal calls for building on a Cummins proprietary thermal spray technology to develop an advanced metal substrate or surface resulting in a 50% cost reduction by using less metal and cutting processing costs.
As a leader in SOFCs for commercial and industrial power, Cummins’ novel spray technology enables larger cells, higher power densities, increased reliability, and lower costs. Its industry leading cell and stack size reduces system costs and complexity while providing a modular building block suitable for a variety of applications. The company also uses commodity stainless steel in its cells rather than more expensive and brittle ceramics used by some competitors.
For more information:
Cummins Inc.
https://www.cummins.com/always-on
