Affordable Hydrogen Fuel Cells That Work!

Scintilla CME Limited was founded in March 2015 as the flagship collaborative manufacturing enterprise (CME) for the regional production of advanced fuel cell technology. Using technology developed by Cygnus Atratus Ltd., a fuel cell development company. The aim was to provide community based production of fuel cells and hydrogen fuel from waste, creating stationary power production to local communities at an affordable price.

The fuel cells technology are of a direct descendant of the Thomas Bacon Fuel Cell, the alkaline fuel cell used by NASA, most notable on the Appolo missions. This technology was further developed by Belgian Company Elenco and later on ZeTek who built the first hydrogen fuel cell powered London Taxis in the late 1990’s.

The ZeTek fuel cells worked, were robust and were tested for over 40,000 hours without degradation and contrary to confusion within the scientific community, are able to use air as the source for Oxygen. Furthermore, an alkaline fuel cell system captures CO2, providing Direct Air Capture and use opportunities.

There were two barriers to the commercialisation of hydrogen fuel cell in the late 1990’s, the cost of the production of the fuel cells, and the hydrogen issues of availability and storage.

Cygnus Atratus has taken a different approach to both of these problems and developed a fuel cell that is affordable yet maintains the same durability and longevity as the ZeTek fuel cells, and avoids the hydrogen problems by creating zero carbon hydrogen on demand from waste.

For those unfamiliar with a hydrogen fuel cell, it can be thought of as a battery that provides DC power which can be increased by combining them together as “stacks” to get the voltage or current characteristics for the intended purpose. Unlike a battery, the fuel cell does not need recharging by electricity, it is recharged by supplying hydrogen and oxygen (from air), these two gasses combine to create water, heat and electricity. So long as fuel is supplied to the fuel cell in the correct quantities, power will be available 24/7.

Waste to Energy

Our current approach of a waste to energy power plant is to take household waste, collect it by large vehicles, then combine it and put it on larger vehicles, transport it further afield and burn it. This approach makes things easier for contractors but makes it difficult to adhere to the waste hierarchy.

Scintilla CME Ltd was working with community partners at The Bridge Liverpool CIC, towards localised waste collection with manual sorting. This is to ensure useful items are kept in use, things that can be repurposed would and that organic waste would be processed to create zero carbon energy with a by product of heat, water and soil ameliorate. The water, soil and captured CO2 are then used for food production to be sold back to local restaurants, cafes and shops.