HyAxiom’s 440-kilowatt phosphoric acid fuel cell is now its flagship product, and it still draws on technical know-how developed during the Apollo and space shuttle programs.
Credit: HyAxiom Inc.
NASA’s investment in fuel cells dates back to the 1960s, when much of the world still relied on fossil fuels. A fuel cell generates electricity and heat when hydrogen and oxygen bond through an electrolyte. Since its only byproduct is water, it’s an environmentally friendly energy source.
The agency’s interest in fuel cells began when NASA needed to fuel missions to the moon. Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston became interested in fuel cells because they could provide more energy per kilogram than batteries over the course of a long mission. At the time, fuel cells were just a concept that had never been put into practice.
NASA funded the development of the first functional fuel cells because they were needed to reduce the weight of the Apollo spacecraft for lunar missions. Three fuel cells in the Apollo Service Module provided electricity to the capsule containing the astronauts. The division of Pratt & Whitney that manufactured the fuel cells later became UTC Power, now a subsidiary of the Doosan Group known as HyAxiom Inc.
Credit: NASA
NASA funded three companies, including part of Pratt & Whitney, to develop prototypes. For the Apollo fuel cells, NASA selected Pratt & Whitney, which soon became UTC Power, as the supplier of all space shuttle fuel cells. With the funding and the agency’s focus on developing its technology, UTC Power eventually began offering commercial fuel cells. The company is now known as HyAxiom Inc. and operates out of the same South Windsor, Connecticut, plant that produced fuel cells for the agency.
The company launched its first commercial fuel cell in the mid-1990s and introduced its current product line about a decade later.
“The designs they built for these products we use today relied heavily on electrochemistry knowledge from the space program,” said Sridhar Kanuri, HyAxiom’s chief technology officer.
HyAxiom currently produces about 120 units per year, but plans to increase production as government investment in fuel cells increases. The U.S. government plans to use fuel cells to store energy from renewable sources.
Today’s commercial fuel cell companies have inherited much of their know-how from NASA. John Scott, NASA’s principal technologist for energy and storage, said, “All of these companies owe their intellectual property, their corporate heritage, and even generations of personnel to the companies that NASA funded in the early 1960s.”
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