Cummins Power Generation, a division of Cummins Inc., will get a $74.9 million development contract from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop an affordable, compact and virtually pollutant-free 10-kilowatt fuel cell module.

The company has received a contract for $20 million from the DOE to initiate the first phase of the project.
Cummins Power Generation, working together with McDermott Technology Inc., intends to engineer a fuel cell power generation system for multiple consumer and commercial markets. The fuel cell system will generate low-noise, highly reliable power with significantly lower fuel consumption and exhaust emissions compared to existing fossil fuel technologies.
"This contract will provide the basis for us to develop competitively priced stationary and mobile power generator sets utilizing next-generation fuel cell technology," said Paul Plahn, director of Advanced Product Development at Cummins Power Generation. "Our goal is to reduce the manufacturing cost of solid oxide fuel cell systems to that of existing power generation technologies."
Fuel cells operate by oxidizing a reformed fuel on the surface of a special ceramic substrate to generate direct-current (DC) electricity without combustion. The only waste products are water vapor and a small amount of carbon dioxide. Most fuel cells in current limited production require either very large and complex hydrocarbon fuel reformers to produce pure hydrogen or a supply of bottled hydrogen gas as a fuel source. The distribution of bottled hydrogen is not currently economical or practical.
A major advantage of solid oxide fuel cell technology is that it can be used with low-cost, compact fuel reformers that make it possible to substitute natural gas, LP, gasoline and diesel fuels in place of bottled hydrogen to power the fuel cells.