Japan’s Tokuyama Corp. has developed a low-cost electrolyte membrane for high- efficiency direct-methanol fuel cells.
The chemical- maker is supplying sample products to automakers and consumer electronics manufacturers, aiming for commercialization in 2006.
Its new electrolyte membrane is based on hydrocarbon, instead of fluorine, which is currently the mainstream material for such membranes. While fuel cells using fluorine-based membranes are costly and have low power-generation efficiency because the methanol penetrates the membranes, Tokuyama’s product cuts the cost to between a fifth and a tenth that of fluorine-based products and reduces the amount of methanol penetration to one-tenth.
For the time being, Tokuyama will concentrate on electrolyte membranes for fuel cells for cellular phone handsets.
It targets revenue of 4 billion to 5 billion yen from the whole fuel cell business in 2010.
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