Jun 30 2008
VIASPACE Inc, announced today that its subsidiary Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Corporation (DMFCC) has received a purchase order from PolyFuel of Mountain View, California to assist with the design of disposable methanol fuel cartridges.
PolyFuel is a world leader in engineered membranes for fuel cells and has developed a new family of hydrocarbon membranes that exhibit performance characteristics never before simultaneously achieved with any other fuel cell membrane material. Leading Japanese and Korean consumer electronics companies rank PolyFuel's hydrocarbon membrane as the best portable fuel cell membrane available in the world today. PolyFuel also has DMFC stack and system technology, which it will share with its membrane customers as reference designs. Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Corporation and PolyFuel will collaborate in the design of a fuel cartridge for micro fuel
cells using PolyFuel's membrane material.
VIASPACE through DMFCC designs and manufactures disposable fuel cartridges for portable electronics applications. DMFCC has cartridge manufacturing partners in Japan, Korea and the US. Disposable fuel cartridges are the consumable in the potential billion-dollar fuel cell cartridge business and cartridges represent a recurring revenue stream. DMFCC has licensed the extensive Caltech/USC portfolio of direct methanol fuel cell related patents.
VIASPACE also manufactures and distributes fuel cell and battery test equipment and high-quality and safe rechargeable lithium-based batteries.
Carl Kukkonen, CEO of VIASPACE and DMFCC, commented, "We are pleased to begin this new collaboration with PolyFuel. We have known PolyFuel for many
years and have the highest respect for their membranes and their fuel-cell design capabilities. We believe that our cartridge expertise coupled with their deep fuel cell knowledge will hasten micro fuel cell commercialization. We will use our internal expertise as well as that of our world class manufacturing partners, including SATO Group of Japan, Nypro of the U.S. and Tyco Electronics."