A German company has won a grant from the University of South Carolina- City of Columbia Fuel Cell Collaborative to make a chemical used for hydrogen fuel cells. The German company Weylchem Sustainable Materials, a subsidiary of Weylchem US Inc., has a plant near the town of Elgin in Kershaw County.
The company produces ammonia borane, which can be used in the fuel cells. Weylchem claims it has found a way to produce large amounts of the chemical at 99 percent purity. It first partnered with Columbia-based Boroscience International in 2009 to develop a viable process to produce commercial-scale amounts of the compound.
The announcement was made at the 2011 Fuel Cell Seminar & Exposition in Orlando Tuesday. The company says it will match the $100,000 grant 5 to 1 over the next three years.
Weylchem business manager Bryon Leggett says the technology is still years away, but the company hopes to make it more practical. “We’ll produce it for some short period of time and then obviously we can’t continue because the demand’s not out there,” he told South Carolina Radio Network. “Hopefully, we’ll spawn some more research. There is the ability for it to be cost-effective at a real scale.”
Leggett explained Weylchem’s customers would mostly be research laboratories and companies working on prototypes for the military. He said the compound could eventually be used to power unmanned drone planes and submersibles.
Ammonia borane is 19.6 percent hydrogen, which the company says makes it the most efficient and stable compound to use as a storage medium for fuel cells. It is denser than liquid hydrogen and can exist at normal temperatures and pressures.
The Elgin plant is Weylchem’s lone facility in the United States. It has been operating since the 1970s and manufactures a variety of chemical and agricultural products. It currently has about 190 employees.
The news comes a year after Weylchem Sustainable Materials won the 2010 Greater Columbia Fuel Cell Challenge hosted by the collaborative. “We’re thrilled (Weylchem) has been able to continue its success since winning the Greater Columbia Fuel Cell Challenge,” Don Herriot, director of Innovista at the University of South Carolina, said in a statement. Innovista is a member organization of the USC-City of Columbia Fuel Cell Collaborative.
The grant comes as the collaborative continues to push for the Midlands as a fuel cell hub. South Carolina was recently ranked as one of the top states for the alternative form of energy.