Originally published June 9 2005
Fuel cell conference hoping to attractive financial interests and create technological partnerships
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Rodger McKain, chairman of the Ohio Fuel Cell Coalition and president of SOFCo-EFS Holdings LCC, is excited about the group's upcoming conference in Cleveland. The coalition is a trade organization founded by the Ohio Department of Development. One of the themes of the conference is the degree of collaboration among competing research in emerging fuel cell technology. The federal government created The Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance, a national alliance of government laboratories and industry, to develop fuel cell technology. Approximately $36 million in research grants have been awarded and usually that money is matched by universities and business.
The underlying theme is that we can create business opportunities," said Rodger McKain, chairman of the Ohio Fuel Cell Coalition and president of SOFCo-EFS Holdings LLC, an Alliance-based fuel cell company created by McDermott Technology.
The coalition, a trade organization founded by the Ohio Department of Development, universities and manufacturers, will hold its fourth annual conference Wednesday at Cleveland State University's Wolstein Center.
"We will have at least 30 exhibitors and are expecting 200 to 250 participants, many from outside the state who now view Ohio as the place for fuel cells," said Ken Alfred, executive director.
Fuel cells convert hydrogen and oxygen directly into electricity without combustion, producing only water as a waste product.
The Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance, a federally funded national alliance of government laboratories and industry created in 1999 to develop fuel cell technology, recognized Ohio in April as the leader in development of solid oxide fuel cells.
"That recognition is good and bad," said Mike Martin, director of fuel cell technology at Edison Materials Technology Center in Kettering, near Dayton, and a speaker at the conference.
The Edison Center has focused on what Martin calls the fuel cell supply chain, an effort to find Ohio manufacturing companies capable of making the components and subsystems that will be part of any fuel cell system, whether for a laptop, an automobile or stationary power generation.
The center has put together a searchable online database of Ohio organizations, contacts, products and services that will contribute to the supply chain.
"We have already talked to 50 companies and academic institutions and know how they will fit," Martin said.
Locally, FirstEnergy Corp. is involved in a pilot project with Electric Power Research Institute, the Defense Department, Case Western Reserve University and Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
Two five-kilowatt fuel cell generators have been installed at the park and connected to FirstEnergy's distribution system, said spokesman Mark Durbin.
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