Oorja Protonics emerges and raises the stakes
seanseamour on March 18 2008 at 3:48 am | Filed under: Oorja Protonics
Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DFMC) that claim to be ten to a hundred times more powerful than the existant!
No, it doesn’t appear to be blue sky, this would be the fifth generation developed and deployed with industrial end users since 2005 as a self contained retrofits for material handling vehicles like pallet loaders, tuggers, and automated guided vehicles. Oorja Protonics’s fuel cells are retrofitted into the battery compartment to operate as an on-board battery charger that continuously charges the smaller battery that appears to function as an energy storage buffer.
If our hopes of seeing a fuel cell crossover from the automotive sector to the marine recreational market were faded with recent announcements by GM and Toyota, perhaps we will see the migration from industrial applications such as materials handling equipment. Considering such equipment can weigh several tons, constantly demanding torque effort for traction and hydraulics, the simple math “guestimate” appears encouraging when preliminary data shows two full eight hour shifts for five gallons of methanol - less than a litre an hour. Try that with a 50 to 75 hp Yanmar or Volvo diesel, oversized to compensate for low torque at low RPM range at which sailors usually motor.
Borrowing from the company’s press release as published on Business Wire, “Oorja’s direct methanol fuel cells are novel in that they eliminate the barriers associated with hydrogen fuel cell adoption, namely the high price of compressed hydrogen gas, lack of hydrogen supply infrastructure, and hydrogen’s inherent volatility as a fuel source. Methanol is a much better alternative to hydrogen fuel cells due to its low cost, ready availability, and greatly reduced volatility.”
Already some weeks ago I was wondering on this blog what ever happened to the Daimler Chrysler’s NECAR 5 which as early as 2002 made a trip from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., the first attempt to drive a methanol charged fuel-cell-powered car cross-country. The car had to be refueled about every 300 miles. Again wondering about China’s push towards methanol as an alternative energy (leading world producer).
But today’s announcements of Oorja Protonics was but one response, add to this the EU-funded METHAPU (‘Validation of renewable methanol based auxiliary power systems for commercial vessels’) project, which after nearly one and a half years of research and development, is about to start trials on a prototype of a methanol-based solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) unit (imagine the Violet Fuel Cell Stick). The protoype will be tried and tested for performance and emissions under real-life conditions onboard a car transport vessel involved in international trade.
Oorja Protonics appears to be well prepared for a major push into the market, “while many hydrogen fuel cell providers are still developing their technology”, says CEO Sanjiv Malhotrahe “the OorjaPac is tested and ready for use. We are not selling an R&D dream, this is a full commercial solution we are selling.” Oorja Protonics is funded by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital (the main backer of YouTube) and DAG Ventures and others and plans to announce a major contract with a Tier I automotive manufacturing company very shortly.
Founded by Sanjiv Malhotra, for more than ten years he has been at the forefront of commercial development of alternative power generation and storage technologies. Early in his career as a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories in Berkeley California, he worked on pioneering developments with Zinc-Air batteries. In addition to his technical skills, he went on to take H-Power, a leading fuel cell company, public in August of 2000 and was also a senior executive at another prominent fuel cell company DCH Technologies. Before founding Oorja he was a consultant with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (who we have identified as backing other energy startups of great promise, notably EEStor and Ausra) where he assisted its venture partners with due diligence for energy related investment opportunities.
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