UK startup to use ammonia to power rural cell phone towers

The continued growth of mobile phones in areas without access to the electric grid is putting pressure on companies to find new ways to provide base-load power to cell phone towers.

The market for alternative energy solutions is estimated to be 130,000 towers a year, growing at a rate of more than 6 percent, according to mobile industry group GSMA and ABI Research. The $9.2 billion annual market is concentrated in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.

The current standard is diesel generators, which can be noisy, costly, polluting, and ripe for theft (see Plug Power tests fuel cells in India). But West Sussex, UK-based Diverse Energy thinks it has just the technology to cost-effectively address all of those problems. The startup has raised €4.25 million ($5.9 million) from angel investors for its proton exchange membrane fuel-cell systems, and the company is now seeking €12.5 million ($17.5 million) to move into commercial production as it sets up multiple customer acceptance trials for clusters of 10 units to produce revenue.

Operations Director Alastair Livesey told the Cleantech Group that customers who switch from a diesel generator would break even in two years, so the company plans to initially price the unit to be equivalent to two years of using a diesel generator, including fuel, maintenance and replacement. The system has an estimated lifespan of five years, resulting in an overall cost savings of 25 percent versus diesel generators.

“Our expertise is cost reduction, in particular part-count reduction. A lot of fuel cell developers try to make a fuel cell be completely universal, and so they start adding more and more components so they can do anything,” Livesey said. “We’ve taken out a lot of components, giving us a less expensive fuel cell with less parts to go wrong.”

Diverse Energy was able to remove components from its fuel cell systems by eliminating features such as quick startup. Though a desired feature for other applications, quick startup isn’t necessary because cell phone towers don’t have sudden power demands, Livesey said.

“We are not the fastest to start up, not the smallest, or the lightest. We like to think of ourselves as the Model T Ford. We get the job done, and it goes on and on under these particular conditions.”

Diverse Energy’s system, known as the PowerCube, runs off an ammonia storage tank, which needs to be refueled about once a month. Ammonia is the fifth-most traded commodity worldwide, making it a more-easily obtained fuel than hydrogen, the typical choice to run fuel cells, Livesey said.

Diverse developed an “Ammonia Cracker” to convert the anhydrous ammonia gas intro hydrogen with 90 percent thermal efficiency, Livesey said. Ammonia crackers are widely used in the semiconductors industry, but Livesey said those devices typically run off grid power and have a conversion efficiency of about 50 percent.

Diverse also developed the high-efficiency DC-to-DC converter, and is working on its own remote monitoring and control system that uses the cell phone towers for communication. Diverse purchases the fuel cell stacks for the systems, which need to be replaced about once a year. The system as a whole, available to run at 1.2-kilowatts or 3-kilowatts, reduces carbon emissions by 80 percent, Livesey said.

All the components are fully enclosed in a standard 8-foot shipping container. The enclosure adds a layer of security to the units, but it also serves to make the PowerCube easily deployable around the globe, Livesey said. The structure provides a stable atmosphere for the equipment by protecting it from harsh weather in developing regions.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s in Tanzania, or the Namibian desert, the Chilean mountains, or the monsoon in India,” Livesey said. “This is very much a global technology. We’re providing a power plant that can work anywhere in the world.”

The system has additional benefits when compared with diesel and solar panels, which have value on the black market, Livesey said. Potential thieves would have difficulty selling the ammonia tanks, and wouldn’t be able to siphon from the tanks as they could with diesel. Livesey said between 15 percent and 22 percent of diesel in Africa is lost to theft.

The PowerCube has the byproduct of about one liter an hour of highly purified water, which can be used for medical purposes, and 30 kilograms of fertilizer every three months. Livesey said those quantities are too small for operators to sell, so the byproducts can be used to help the surrounding community.

The company will likely build its manufacturing facilities in the UK, Livesey said. He expects to begin production by mid-2010, with peak production capacity of about 5,000 units a year by early 2011. Final assembly would likely be done in regional hubs. The company plans to contract with local companies for installation and maintenance.

Diverse is currently in talks for a deal with Afrox, an Africa-based division of the Linde Group, to supply ammonia to the PowerCubes. Diverse is also beginning laboratory tests of system with Motorola, Livesey said.

Diverse Energy was formed in April 2007 as a merger of two companies that designed and manufactured demonstration systems on behalf of other fuel cell companies: Alternative Fuel Systems and Fuel Cell Controls. Much of the angel funding came from Paul Young, one of the co-founders of Celtel, and Rodney White, founder and majority shareholder of Cordek, a manufacturer of specialist expanded polystyrene. Diverse Energy currently has 15 fulltime employees.

Diverse Energy is one of 25 potential new investment opportunities the Cleantech Group added to its innovation pipeline this week, available exclusively to members of the Cleantech Network. Members can click here to search the database.

Interested in emerging cleantech innovations? Here are two new international companies added to the Cleantech Group's database this week also looking for funding:

• Denmark-based Hymite is seeking $14 million in a follow-on round for its wafer-level engineered silicon packag platform for the LED market. The company says the technology reduces costs and increases efficiency. Hymite plans to use the proceeds to build up manufacturing capacity, increase sales, and expand worldwide.
• China-based Beijing Tecroad is seeking $15 million to expand production of its range of cylindrical lithium-ion batteries to meet customer demand. The target market is electric buses, cars and other heavy vehicles. 

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