T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] FYI - Methanol fuel cell battery charging

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Re: [Electric Boats] FYI - Methanol fuel cell battery charging

- the most interesting part of the off-site thread was the commercialisation (finally) of Nickel-Iron batteries. they're not delicate, don't have any of the bad habits of most other types, love hard work, no memory, no environmental issues, no real reason they should ever die (if watered regularly).

- they're also a quarter of the weight of agm's, and hopefully mass production etc will get the price down as they look like around 5 times the cost of decent agm's........ but as someone will tell me, if you factor in the d.o.d. and life cycles etc etc they are probably not too far away from agm's?

On 29 August 2013 01:20, Nick <chernikit@gmail.com> wrote:

I can't wait for the day a fuelled charger becomes economically feasible for direct boat propulsion or battery replenishment. A clever fellow in these parts actually put together a hydrogen one of his own design a few years ago and powered a 6 metre sailboat with it. I visited with him to discuss, and it still had some rough edges at the time.

http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=dc595066-34ef-4dc6-85ac-d9fada7549cb&sponsor=

And.. looks like he's still in business:

http://www.agofuelcells.com/index.html

Will have to go have another look.

- Nick

From: electricboats@yahoogroups.com [mailto:electricboats@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Sally Reuther
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 9:58 AM
To: electricboats
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] FYI - Methanol fuel cell battery charging

We've seen these EFOY units and talked with the company - we even had one to try out for a while. They are mainly for 12volt, although they offer a 24volt last I checked. For electric propulsion they can't offer much in the way of charging because they just aren't big enough to handle the larger amperage loads demanded. We are headed to IBEX in a couple of weeks and I'll be interested to see if there is anything new with this. I'll report back if I find anything new and exciting.

Sally Reuther
Annapolis Hybrid Marine

On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Nick <chernikit@gmail.com> wrote:

Just an FYI - recently came across this Pacific Yachting article (Dec 2012) on some in-boat trials of a methanol fuel cell for battery charging produced by SFC (German company near Munich).

http://www.standard-hydrogen.com/PY_DEC12_EFOY.pdf

http://www.sfc.com/en

Looks expensive, but might be the just the right thing for some people.

- Nick