Alicat Scientifics Low Pressure Drop Mass Flow Controllers Provide Significant Advantages in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Systems

Alicat Scientific Inc.s series of mass flow controllers shines in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell System integration, presenting solutions to key difficulties found in the gas delivery components of tubular solid oxide fuel cells.

(PRWEB) December 4, 2004 -- Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) development has grown in leaps and bounds over the last decade evolving into a key technology in the future of stationary and industrial fuel cell applications. Essential to the operation of these systems is precise control of gasses, to the stack and to the burner. Precise gas control vastly improves energy output efficiency and efficiency in resource consumption. Alicat Scientific Inc. series of mass flow controllers have engaged some of the prevalent gas control related concerns of SOFC System manufacturers.

A consistently troublesome obstacle for Fuel Cell Engineers, concerning gas flow control, is pressure drop. Residential gas delivery is almost always less than 3 psi. Hence mass flow controllers in these applications must operate at extremely low pressure drops for flow rates as high as 50SLPM. Alicat offers customized orifice sizing for valves and customized flow bodies, resulting in customizable pressure drop, so the pressure drop is the one you need not the one a manufacturer dictates.

Another issue in gas delivery for Solid Oxide fuel cells is extremes in temperature variance between cabinet temperature and process gas temperature. Most Solid Oxide Fuel Cell cabinets operate at 20 to 45 degrees Celsius, while most process gas temperatures fluctuate between 0 to 50 degrees Celsius. This deviation between cabinet temperature and process temperature creates significant problems for most thermal based flow controllers. Alicats Internally Compensated Laminar technology uses differential pressure calculations to control gas flow, not hot wire calculations. This means an Alicat mass flow controller can be optimized for extreme conditions while maintaining low pressure drops. In addition Alicat mass flow controllers are calibrated for customer specified standard conditions, and customer specified gas mixtures, at the time of manufacture.

Some other advantages of Alicat devices include industry leading, 100 millisecond speed of control, and a 10 millisecond response time to transient conditions. The graphical display and multi-drop RS232 allow the user to control multiple units, as well as utilize separate analog signals. Many of Alicats customers have benefited from secondary analog output of absolute pressure information, and additional information available from the display and digital outputs. Alicats mass flow controller also supports easy selection of one of 14 built-in standard gas calibrations. Also Alicat devices allow users the ability to alter PID algorithms in order to tune the units to specific application requirements.

Alicat Scientific, Inc. has been a leading manufacturer of mass flow, volumetric flow, liquid flow, and pressure instrumentation for over 12 years. Further information can be obtained at http://www.alicatscientific.com or by contacting an Alicat sales representative at (520) 290-6060.

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