Advent develops, manufactures, and licenses solutions for each industry under the Li.F.E.TM (Liquid Fuel Electrochemical Engines) brand name. Li.F.E engines use HTPEM fuel cell technology with core materials such as membrane electrode assemblies, MEAs produced in house.
HT PEM fuel cells offer several advantages as:
- No need for hydrogen or grid availability
- Liquid Fuel Flexibility (Methanol, Ethanol, LNG, etc.)
- Clean Power: No harmful emissions
- Very low CO2/kWh (lower than pure electric in most regions)
In the foreseeable future, the use of renewable methanol made by combining green hydrogen with CO2 will result in true net zero emissions operation. Already across the world many plants are producing renewable methanol and capacity is growing.
- Lower fuel costs
- Total efficiency up to 90 %
- Electrical Efficiency >45%
- Simple Design
- Superior Heat Management
The main fuel cell competing technologies are the high temperature solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs, 800oC) and the Low Temperature PEMFCs (80oC). The advantages and disadvantages of these technologies are summarized below. HT PEMFCs combine the finest aspects of SOFCs and conventional PEMFCs providing the best solution for various applications.
How does Li.F.E. Fuel Cell work?
Current Li.F.E. products
Li.F.E. Station of 1-3kW is already available and provides power and heat for off-grid, backup, telecom, industrial & residential applications.
In addition to Li.F.E. Station stacks, example of Li.F.E solutions that can be developed for license are:
Li.F.E. Drive15: A 15kW Li.F.E. Engine added to a li-ion based BEV triples the range, cuts battery weight in half, and drops refill time to minutes. It is still a BEV but with half the battery and none of the BEV’s problems
Li.F.E. Fly30: Using a 30kW fuel cell, the Air Taxi of the future can carry 2x the load, 3x the distance, of BEV prototypes, and refills in minutes.
Li.F.E. Fly1: A 1kW Li.F.E. Engine drone can fly for 12hrs vs. 30mins for battery-only model
Uniqueness of Li.F.E cooling concept
The uniqueness of our Li.F.E. stacks lies on the cooling design and the type of coolant they use, which solves several problems related to the use of heat transfer fluids flowing inside the stack that conventional HTPEMFC utilize.
Specifically, in conventional HTPEMFC, the bipolar plates are of two-piece design with a fluid flowing between the two clamped half plates. This architecture requires that three things are sealed in the stack: the anode and cathode reactants as well as the coolant. The risk of leaking is high because the available heat transfer fluids -usually containing toxic components- have wetting behavior which allows them to easily leak past seals and are not chemically compatible with the elastomers used for sealing stacks at the operating temperature.
In L.i.F.E. stacks the coolant flows external to the stack Li.F.E. stacks combine two approaches to stack cooling: conductive transfer of heat from the edges of the stack, and flowing a high thermal capacity coolant as a working-fluid while maintaining two phases in that coolant. This solution is an effective means to externally cool HTPEM fuel cell stacks with simplified and reliable hardware geometries and using water or water organic species mixtures as working-fluids and to make use of a phase change for heat transfer.
An additional advantage is related to weight and space of the overall cooling loop. If a system uses Li.F.E. stacks, the radiator needed is much smaller compared to the radiator of a system that uses conventional HTPEMFC. Additionally, the total coolant weight is much lower compared to the weight of the heat transfer fluid required for a conventional stack. This has additional system benefits such as requiring a much smaller coolant pump.
NEXT GEN Li.F.E. Fuel Cell products
We are already working towards the development of our next generation stacks which will be available in the market in 2021. These will utilize new membranes able to work at high power densities for long time and lightweight bipolar plates which will result to a much higher power to weight ratio.