The new membrane and MEA allows the water to be kept in perfect balance throughout the system. The result is a considerable simplification in the design of the fuel cell system, eliminating components, reducing overall size and weight, and lowering cost. These are significant, as the primary difficulty with fuel cells has been to make them small enough to be able to be integrated into the notebook PC itself.

PolyFuel recognized some time ago that despite the best efforts of fuel cell developers, certain problems were simply not being solved. Unfortunately, that state of affairs increasingly has contributed to lowered expectations for fuel cells in general, and as a high-performance replacement for batteries in particular.

In response, the company put together an aggressive internal program to work on not only the membrane challenges, which were PolyFuel’s area of proven expertise, but also to solve the system-level problems, such as water management, fuel delivery, packaging, notebook integration, and so forth. PolyFuel sought – and received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to support and expedite the program.

According to Jim Balcom, president and CEO of PolyFuel, the five milestones of the program are as follows:

• Develop a conceptual design for a complete fuel cell system that can outperform Lithium-ion batteries, and identify the membrane and MEA requirements to support this.
• Engineer a membrane that has a high level of water permeability but a low level of methanol diffusivity – usually mutually-exclusive attributes.
• Design an MEA that can recycle much of the water that is created in the fuel cell back to and through the newly engineered membrane.
• Demonstrate the “proof of concept” by operating a fuel cell incorporating the newly-engineered membrane and MEA in perfect water balance using the conceptual system design target operating conditions.
• Incorporate that cell into a functioning notebook PC power module and demonstrate it powering a commercially-available notebook computer.

Of these milestones, PolyFuel has now met the first four of the five. In particular, multiple “proof of concept” fuel cells incorporating the new membrane, MEA and other newly-engineered system components have been running for hundreds of hours under PolyFuel’s dramatically-simplified system design and target operating conditions.

With these results, PolyFuel has reached a key milestone in its goal of creating a fully-referenceable design that it believes will re-energize portable fuel cell development programs around the world. Additionally, they should prove once and for all that a fuel-cell-based power module can have the size and performance consumers will require and desire for their increasingly power-hungry notebook computers.

Fresh with feedback from a recent round of customer visits with top consumer electronics manufacturers in Asia, Balcom confirmed that success in the program would likely have the intended market impact. “At each customer, we unveiled our specific technical breakthroughs and the performance benchmarks we’ve attained – particularly the measured progress against our reference-design development milestones,” said Balcom. “Without exception, each customer stated their belief that PolyFuel is at the leading edge of fuel cell system technology – not just membranes. Moreover, we were uniformly told that if we indeed surpass the performance of Lithium-ion batteries – the ultimate goal of the program – that our technology, when made available as a reference design, would enable them to develop and introduce a fuel cell powered notebook PC and other fuel-cell powered portable electronic products.”

Environmentally friendly, portable fuel cells operate by transforming readily available, inexpensive methanol into electricity with the use of a membrane that literally strips the electrons out of molecules in the fuel, and uses the resulting electric current to provide power. A substantial advantage that fuel cells have over batteries is that as long as fuel is present, the cells will continue to provide power.

In consumer-oriented portable fuel cells, the laptop power supply would have “hot-swappable” fuel cartridges – easily and safely carried in a pocket or purse – that could effectively provide continuous power all day – and all night – if necessary. PolyFuel’s ultimate program goal is just such a power supply, no larger than a Lithium-ion battery pack having the same runtime as is attained with one cartridge of fuel, but also at perhaps one-half the weight – a welcome portability improvement for mobile consumers.

The use of direct methanol fuel cells and the personal carriage of fuel cartridges were given a significant boost last year when the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) and the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) approved the carriage and use of fuel cells on board civilian aircraft.

About PolyFuel

PolyFuel (www.polyfuel.com) is a world leader in fuel cell technology, particularly engineered membranes, that provides significantly improved performance in both direct methanol and hydrogen fuel cells, especially for portable electronic and automotive applications. The state of the art in fuel cells is closely tied to the membrane, and PolyFuel’s best in class, hydrocarbon-based membranes enable a new generation of fuel cells that for the first time can deliver on the long-awaited promise of clean, cost-effective, and non-stop portable power.

PolyFuel has an unmatched capability to rapidly translate the system-level requirements of fuel cell designers and manufacturers into engineered polymer nano-architectures. Such capability – based on PolyFuel’s more than 150 combined years of fuel cell experience, world-class polymer nano-architects, and a fundamental patent position covering more than 25 different inventions – also makes PolyFuel an essential development partner and supplier to any company seeking to advance the state of the art in fuel cells. Fuel cells built with PolyFuel’s hydrocarbon membranes, as the Company’s own performance-leading reference designs have demonstrated, can be smaller, lighter, longer-running, more efficient, less expensive and more robust than those made with other membrane materials.

PolyFuel is working with most of the world’s leading portable fuel cell system developers, the majority of whom are household brand name consumer electronics manufacturers. Several of the largest Japanese and Korean consumer electronics companies rank PolyFuel’s hydrocarbon membranes as the best portable fuel cell membranes available in the world today, and its DMFC stack and now system technology, which it readily shares with its customers, is unsurpassed.

PolyFuel was spun out of SRI International (formerly the Stanford Research Institute) in 1999, after 14 years of applied membrane research. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and is publicly listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.

Editors, note: All trademarks and registered trademarks are those of their respective companies.

Additional background information is available at www.roeder-johnson.com.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements, including with respect to the development of the fuel cell market. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, risks inherent in the development and commercialization of potential products. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements.

PolyFuel securities have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to U.S. persons (within the meaning of Regulation S under the Securities Act) unless the securities are registered under the Securities Act or an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act is available. Hedging transaction involving any such securities may not be conducted unless in compliance with the Securities Act.