May 22 2008
VIASPACE Inc., announced today that Mr. Nate Hurvitz, Engineering and Operations Director for VIASPACE Energy, presented an invited paper at the Fuel Cell 2008 Conference held in Long Beach, CA today. The conference brought together company executives, government officials and policy makers, scientists and engineers, and academicians from around the United States to discuss the utilization and commercialization of fuel cells.
Mr. Hurvitz's presentation focused on VIASPACE Energy's new HS-1000 VIASENSOR, a state of the art, laser-based humidity detection instrument used to measure the dew point of Hydrogen based fuel cells and in fuel cell test stations. The performance of hydrogen fuel cells using a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) depends on the moisture level of the membrane. The membrane only conducts protons when it is hydrated or moist. The moisture is provided by water vapor in the incoming air or hydrogen stream. The VIASENSOR HS-1000 provides real-time measurements of the amount of water vapor in these gas streams. It is the only humidity sensor that provides in-situ, continuous and fast-responding dew point measurement. With its laser-based design, the VIASENSOR HS-1000 takes data measurements every second, does not require specialized installation and is of no danger or harm to the fuel cell.
Dr. Kukkonen, CEO of VIASPACE, commented, "The VIASENSOR HS-1000 solves the key challenges of accurately measuring the fuel cell humidity levels in both high temperature and high humidity environments. It is designed to provide convenient and automatic data collection by computer via serial port or USB adapter. We believe this new product will help our customers optimize their hydrogen fuel cell designs. We have demonstrated this new product to major automobile manufacturers and to major fuel cell manufacturing companies such as Ballard with extremely favorable feedback."