Status of the M-C Power MCFC commercialization program

MC Power Corporation's (MCP) mission is to commercialize molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) power plants based on an internally manifolded IMHEX/sup (R/) stack concept patented by the Institute of Gas Technology. MCP has successfully scaled up the manufacturing and design of the MCFC technology to commercial area (1 m/sup 2/). Five commercial-area 20 kW stacks and two commercial-area 25O kW stacks have been built and operated. A third commercial (250-kW) stack is being assembled. Continuous process improvements and yield increases have been demonstrated for the manufacturing run for each successive 250 kW stack. These improvements resulted in a 63% reduction in the cost ofthe active area components from the first to the third 250 kW stack. Concurrent with the production and testing of commercial-area fuel cell stacks, M-C Power has an ongoing effort to develop, test, and scale-up to commercial-area advanced component technologies that will enable M-C Power to meet cost and performance, and endurance goals. This effort focuses on developing lower cost stack components with improved endurance and performance and evaluating alternate manufacturing procedures and raw materials which significantly lower the stack costs. Following performance verification at the bench scale level, scale-up of the advanced component manufacturing processes to the commercial-area has been ongoing for a year.