Toyota to continue providing residential fuel cell cogeneration systems for Government project

Toyota Motor Corporation announced today that it plans to provide, for the third year in a row, home-use fuel cell cogeneration units as part of a government project to verify the practical use of CO2-reducing stationary fuel cells.

The municipal-gas-fueled 1-kW home-use fuel cell cogeneration units which generate electricity and capture waste heat for household heating are to play a role in the continuing Large-Scale Stationary Fuel Cell Demonstration Project of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Twenty-four of the units will be provided to project participant Toho Gas Co., Ltd. (Toho), which will install them in homes in three central-Japan prefectures (Aichi, Gifu and Mie) to collect data toward commercialisation. The government project, which was originally scheduled to conclude on March 31, 2008, is now expected to run until the end of March 2009.

Toyota's home-use fuel cell cogeneration units run on a system jointly developed with Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd. consisting of a stationary fuel cell and a hot water storage tank. It is claimed recent improvements, such as a modified heat-recovery circuit, have boosted heat-recovery efficiency by roughly 20% (as measured by Toyota) without any loss in power-generation efficiency.

Source: Fuel Cell Today