T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] DMFC Fuel Cells

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Re: [Electric Boats] DMFC Fuel Cells - Hybrid Nirvana?

Hi Keith,

Fuel cells interest me greatly and I'd love to be able to get the
numbers to work so I can can go ahead and do it.

On my boat ( http://www.currentsunshine.com ) I have 200 Ah of
Lithium batteries, and so far, not much experience in using them.
Right now my boat is on the hard (still) and it will be at least a
few weeks before she's back in the water. My intention is to run
solely from a solar/wind/water power source, and for propulsion to
mostly rely on the sailing.

In the small experience I've had so far it seems that 5 to 20 ah per
day (@50v) is a typical use for me when I'm moving the boat between
anchorages. But that was with an Epod which I've now abandoned in
favour of Torqeedo . The Torqeedo is twice as efficient (as well as
being reliable) and so my usage could be half that now. On sunny
days, my solar panels, nominally 500w, can top up the house batteries
and still have enough left over to provide about 5 to 10 ah for the
engine batteries. So the balance seems pretty close.

The problem comes at those times when I need to travel up river, or
in areas where the navigation channels are narrow and the wind
contrary, which mandates motoring. On such days I could easily run
up a deficit of 100 ah (at 50v this is 50x100 = 5000watthours). To
get this back from the sun will take me 5 to 10 days stuck at anchor.
And thats if its sunny. (And maybe I can get some wind energy as
well, but I digress)

So I'm really interested in a 500W fuel cell. That would recover my
deficit in ten hours.

What I've checked out in the past have been the fuel cells such as
the MaxPower http://www.marine-fuel-cell.com/index.html and others
similar and these can produce around 50 watts and need a methanol/
water mix rather than straight methanol. This power would still get
me going quicker than solar alone, but they're expensive, and still
require carrying of many litres of fuel to be useful. So far they've
shaped up as too expensive and awkward for me.

But the possibility of 500w continuous attracts me.

I checked out the IRD website and they claim 1 litre per hour, for
the 1kw version, and half that for 500w. That would be fine as I
already carry methanol for cooking. I'll just need bigger fuel
storage - and perhaps a tank rather than the 1 litre bottles I use
now for cooking.

But I don't see any sizes for the power pack, nor any prices on the
IRD site. And when prices are not listed I expect the worst. But if
it is less than 10k, I reckon I could be interested.

So please keep us posted when you get the figures together.

Cheers

Chris