Ansaldo Fuel Cells is a Finmeccanica Company controlled by Ansaldo Energia, Italy’s leading producer of thermoelectric power plants. Active as a developer of Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells technology since over 20 years, Ansaldo Fuel Cells represents the only Italian and European actor with an industrial medium term perspective having set up a stack manufacturing facility, active since 2004 in Terni, Italy.
After a successful demonstration phase, where 6 plants have been commissioned and tested, Ansaldo Fuel Cells is now committed in a development program aimed at turning the field experience made so far and still ongoing into a commercially viable product with full liability on performance, delivery and life-cycle cost.
For the perspective market the MW-Class product class is being developed. To this aim different stack models has been developed as evolution of the “workhorse” model used throughout the demonstration phase. Ansaldo Fuel Cells has developed its own proprietary technology and has set up an international network of partners, research institutes, qualifed suppliers and co-developers for some components.
The 2007 Frost & Sullivan European Energy Technology Innovation of the Year Award has been assigned to Ansaldo Fuel Cells for its innovative molten carbonate fuel cell design suitable for a wide range of power generation applications.
In Bosco Marengo, a small town in northern Italy, Ansaldo Fuel Cells has concentrated most of its internal full scale experimental activity in a “fuel cell campus” operating 2 MCFC units of substantial power (1 or 2 stacks plants) aimed to verify performance, validate new units (FA 200 series), improve Balance of Plant and test endurance and lifetime (more than 30,000 hrs already accrued by plant and more than 12,000 hrs by a single stack unit).
All these activities have been developed in co-operation with industrial operators, Universities and R&D Centers to improve performance, reliability and availability. Ansaldo Fuel Cells is developing a brand new solution applied to Carbon Capture and Sequestration.
The use of MCFC as an “active” system for CO2 concentration with the capacity to generate electricity and act as a CO2 concentrator by itself or associated with other post-combustion technologies for the CO2 capture, would:
- provide an increase of power output including CCS (instead of reduction as for other solutions currently under development)
- offer the possibility to spread out the investment following the emission rules thanks to its modularity
- use renewable fuels like biogas where available
- avoid any other emission
Ansaldo Fuel Cells, C.so Perrone, 25 - 16152 Genoa - Italy
Ph. +39.010.655.8311
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