THE fuel cell technology used for the Cheyenne Biogas Power Plant is supplied by FuelCell Energy, based in Danbury, Connecticut. Fuel cells have efficiency and emissions advantages over conventional combustion-based power generation.
FuelCell Energy’s products use a ‘carbonate’ fuel cell, a particular variant of the technology, which is maintained at a temperature that allows hydrogen to be extracted from methane easily and within the fuel cell ‘stack’, according to the firm.
Extracting hydrogen from methane tends to require expensive and inefficient systems, a problem FuelCell Energy claims to have cracked. This seems to be to do with the way methane reacts with water in the fuel cell stack. The hydrogen in the methane and the water separate out to become pure hydrogen while the carbon in the methane reacts with the oxygen in the water to become carbon dioxide.
