ACAL Energy has achieved key milestones in the development of its fuel cell technology

The company has completed build of its first field test system, producing gross power of 3kW.

At the same time ACAL Energy has also achieved a new record peak performance power density of nearly 900mW/cm2 – a substantial improvement over the previously announced peak power record of around 600mW/cm2.

ACAL Energy has built its first FlowCath demonstration unit, and will install the unit next month at Solvay Interox's chemical plant at Warrington, Cheshire. There, it will provide continuous electrical power to a remote environmental monitoring system within the manufacturing facility.

The stack and regenerator sub-systems in the demonstration unit are together capable of producing over 3kW of electrical power, and represent a large scale-up from the previous generation test unit which produced about 1kW.

The demonstration system is part of a collaborative project that ACAL Energy is leading, co-funded by the Technology Strategy Board.

The project is seen as a major step towards commercialisation for this innovative technology, and is supported by ACAL Energy's partners: Solvay Interox, Johnson Matthey Fuel Cells, UPS Systems, the Centre for Process Innovation, the University of Southampton and the Manufacturing Engineering Centre at Cardiff University.