On the copower.com website, you will find products from two publicly traded companies, DCHT and XYBR.
the other company, Lightforce, that markets the electronic lighting and the microturbines is a private company.
CoPower.com is a product showcase website and an internet marketing/industry outreach, designed to forward sales leads to the companies showcasing there.
It is no secret that I have done some consulting work to DCH and received 100,000 shares and $ 5,000 for my efforts; but that was several months ago, and life goes on.
On another note;
The Signal, LA newspaper carried the press release from
yesterday, and added quotes from DCH President, David Walker,
Power to the people
By Leon Worden, Signal Business Editor
Wednesday, July 21, 1999
Hydrogen fuel cells designed in Valencia could provide power to
homes in the Pacific
Northwest one day, if everything tests out right.
Northwest Power Systems of Bend, Ore., announced Monday that
it has purchased a
3-kilowatt fuel cell system from DCH Technology, Inc. of
Valencia.
The system
incorporates Northwest Power's patented fuel processor,
which generates pure hydrogen that a fuel cell, such as the
one manufactured by DCH, needs to produce electricity.
Northwest Power has a $3.5 million contract with the Bonneville
Power Administration
(BPA) to provide 110 fuel cell units over the next four years. BPA
is a federal power
marketing agency within the U.S. Dept. of Energy that supplies
about half the power to
Oregon, Washington, Idaho and western Montana.
According to Alan Guggenheim, president of Northwest Power,
“This purchase from
DCH Technology is strategic to the integration of our proprietary
fuel processor with fuel
cells from as many different manufacturers as possible. Our
objective is to test
approximately 25 small-scale, experimental prototype fuel cell
systems the next 12
months, and more than 150 the next three years.”
DCH is in the business of marketing hydrogen-based technologies
developed by national
laboratories such as Los Alamos and Sandia, and while the
company is perhaps better known
for manufacturing hydrogen leak detectors, DCH was recently
chosen by the Dept. of
Energy to take the lead in a study to determine the feasibility of
using hydrogen power on
naval vessels.
Company president David Walker said the fuel cell used in the
system purchased by
Northwest Power is a modified form of a proton-exchange
membrane (PEM) fuel cell
developed by energy department scientists at Los Alamos National
Laboratory. The
principle is the same, in that electrons are stripped from hydrogen
and sent through a circuit
to produce electricity.
But unlike smaller PEM fuel cells, which generate about 1 kilowatt
of
electricity, the cell purchased by Northwest Power uses reformed
methanol or propane to
produce 3 kilowatts of power.
“It's still very clean energy,” Walker said.
For Northwest Power, DCH personnel in the Valencia Industrial
Center will manufacture
the electronic controls, cooling system and other hardware, which
will be integrated with the
fuel cell at DCH's plant in Wisconsin.
DCH is on track to sell more fuel cell systems to Northwest Power
if the first one “meets
the quality criteria,” Walker said. So far only one competitor, De
Nora, S.p.A. of Milan,
Italy, is providing similar fuel cells to Northwest Power, Walker
said.
Hydrogen fuel cells are not new— they were invented in 1839 and
used to power the
Gemini and Apollo spacecraft— but they were not practical for
many applications until the
last few years, when scientists at Los Alamos developed lighter,
less expensive versions.
DCH holds a cooperative research agreement and an exclusive
license agreement with Los
Alamos to develop and market the “air-breathing proton-exchange
membrane fuel cell.”
HOW IT
WORKS:
Hydrogen is
supplied to
the anode,
where it
breaks apart
into protons
and
electrons. The electrode conducts protons but not electrons. The
protons flow throught the electrode while the electrons travel
through the external circuit and provide electrical power. The
electrons and protons are reunited at the cathode and combine
with oxygen from the air to produce water.
the-signal.com
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