Geoffrey Ballard, CM, OBC (16 October 1932 – 2
August 2008) was a Canadian geophysicist and businessman. One of the studies he
had been involved in at the U.S. Federal Energy Conservation Research office
was on electric cars powered by conventional lead-acid batteries. Ballard had
met Ralph Schwartz in Arizona, who introduced
him to the idea of using lithium batteries in place of lead-acid, as they would
be much lighter. However, at the time, lithium batteries were not able to be
recharged. Schwartz convinced Ballard that they should study the problem, and
Ballard cashed in his pension to buy a portion of their new joint venture,
American Energizer. Schwartz and Ballard were introduced to Keith Prater at the
University of Texas chemistry department, and sold him on the idea of
developing a new rechargeable lithium battery technology with them. Prater was
able to quickly determine that no one knew what the product of the lithium-salt
reactions in existing batteries were, and guessed that it was lithium
dithionite, which he was able to synthesize. Working in a trailer, Ballard and
Schwartz built a simple battery and Prater brought a sample of the lithium
dithionite, and when they were placed together and charged, a weak current was
produced. After further development the system was able to be recharged about a
dozen times. Ballard had always wanted to return to Canada, so Schwartz sold
his interest in the battery technology to Ballard for $1, while Ballard sold
his interest in Schwartz's latest venture, a mechanical anti-lock braking
system for the same $1. In 1979 Ballard moved to Vancouver and became president
and CEO of Ultra Energy.
In 1983, Ballard, Prater and Paul Howard
started looking for new ideas for their development side to work on as the
funds for the battery project dried up. Among a variety of ideas were a number
of attempts to find government funding, which eventually led them to a
Department of National Defense (DND) request for proposals for bids to produce
a low-cost solid polymer fuel cell. Now known as PEM's, these cells had only
been used commercially in Project Gemini and a few other space probes, and
General Electric gave up on the technology when NASA moved onto other fuel cell
designs for Project Apollo and the Space Shuttle. Although a number of attempts
had been made to lower the high cost of PEM cells since then, none had been
commercially successful. They won the $500,000 contract, which called
for them to provide three prototype cells that produced between 50 and 150
watts and be ready in 28 months. After meeting the requirements, they won a
follow-up contract, and it was during this project, in 1986, when they reached
a milestone of producing four times as much energy per unit volume as any
previous fuel cell.
Feeling the technology was ready for commercial
use, in 1989 Ballard raised $4 million in public money from the British
Columbia government to build a fuel cell powered bus, introducing it at Science
World in 1993. He took the bus to energy fairs around the world, and
Daimler-Chrysler and Ford invested $750 million to buy a one-third stake in the
newly public Ballard Power Systems. Ballard told Time in 1999 that the
fuel-cell cars should become economical by 2010.
Dr. Sean MacKinnon was Senior Research Scientist
at Ballard Power Systems , where he drafted, negotiated and managed a High
Temperature PEM research project funded through Natural Resources Canada, in
collaboration with NRC-IFCI. Later he worked at General Motors Fuel cell Research
lab as Principle Investigator and program manager for collabative membrane
development programs with strategic partners. He continued work at National Research
Council of Canada and developed proton exchange membranes for automotive
polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. Dr Deve Ghosh was Director R&D at NRC
Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation in Vancouver, BC, development of Low cost
durable PEMFC Pt alloy catalyst on non-carbon support ( $10M 3 year project
with Ballard & AFCC) was one of major R&D project.
Mr. David Leger, has been working on the
technology with inventor and engineer Mr. Greg Montie B.Eng for over a decade. Greg
was a Director on the board for PowerDisc Technology, and has performed lead
technical roles at Cummins Westport natural gas engines, dPoint energy recovery
systems, and PowerDisc hydrogen fuel cells. During this time, he had invented
and filed 10 patents resulting in a number of commercial successes. Invented
and developed the patented the eFlow hydrogen fuel cell. Specifically, eFlow is
an exponentially delineating hydrogen fuel cell, and is currently considered to
have one of the highest specific power outputs and the only substantial fuel
cell to claim uniform current density.
In 2005 Inventors Greg Montie, Rodney Bruce
Redlich and David Earl Leger filed
patent for Fuel cell cathode flow field ,Patent number: 7838169 assigned to Power Disc Development
Corporation. A fuel cell cathode flow field has multiple channels each with a
cross-sectional area that varies along the length of the channel such that
oxygen availability at every lengthwise position along the channel is kept
substantially constant for a given channel length and air stoichiometry ratio.
Each channel comprises a flat floor with substantially constant depth and a
pair of side walls extending upwardly from the floor; the side walls each taper
inwards from channel inlet to outlet with a convex curve relative to the
channel centreline. Achieving substantially uniform oxygen availability
throughout the flow field results in substantially uniform current density
throughout the flow field, which is desirable for efficient fuel cell operation
and improved performance.
PowerDisc Development Corporation is a fuel
cell company based in Vancouver BC with David Leger co- inventor of eFlow Fuel
Technology was CEO and President and Dr Sean MacKinnon is Chief Scientist. PowerDisc
has also been selected as a participant in the Canadian Technology Accelerator
Program (CTA). Sponsored by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade
and Development, and administered by the consular trade commissioner in
Colorado, the CTA program is focused on assisting Canadian technology companies
to enter the United States marketplace while providing them with improved access to funding,
customers and networks of expertise.
PowerDisc is later renamed as Loop Energy Inc
in 2016 to mark the introduction of the company's
zeroemission powertrain for heavyduty transportation.
Cummins is a strategic partner and Loop will supply Cummins with its
30-kilowatt (kW) and 50-kW FC-REX range-extender systems for use in Class 6-8
demonstration trucks. Loop has several demonstration programs underway. One
involves retrofitting two Class 8 Peterbilt 579 long-haul trucks with
fuel-cell/battery-electric drive system integrator TransPower. Those trucks
will haul up to 80,000 pounds of freight throughout the San Diego and Los
Angeles regions later this year. In 2019
company has established a joint venture and non-exclusive license agreement
with IN-Power, a leading power electronics supplier to the transport sector in
China. In April 2020 Loop Energy, received a purchase order from a leading bus
manufacturer in China to support the Nanjing municipal government's objective
of replacing its existing 7000-unit battery-electric bus fleet with an improved
battery-hydrogen hybrid alternative.
During this journey the firm received several
grants in Canada. It was awarded a $7.5 million grant from Sustainable
Development Technology Canada (SDTC) to accelerate deployment of the company's new
zero-emission powertrain for heavy-duty trucks. Funding under Western
Innovation (WINN)
Initiative contributed to commercialize and scale fuel cell range extender for
heavy-duty Class 8 trucks and buses beginning in 2018.
