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Business Plan Executive Summary HCE, LLC is an energy company, which was formed in July 2003 to commercialize a breakthrough electricity, hydrogen and synfuels production process This process has been termed the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process by its inventor. The inventor is Meyer Steinberg, a nationally known expert in energy conversion processes, and formerly with Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell (IPFC) process is made possible by integrating two recent inventions: a carbon black manufacturing technology called the Hydrogen Plasma Black Reactor and a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory technology called the Direct Carbon Fuel Cell. The carbon black technology continuously cracks a fossil fuel into its useful components using an electricity-powered hydrogen plasma. The Livermore fuel cell electrochemically combines carbon and oxygen and produces electricity and concentrated carbon dioxide gas. The combination has a revolutionary synergy that would empower the future of electricity and hydrogen production from fossil fuels. The Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process would operate at very high efficiencies and with a capability for zero CO2 releases. It does not burn the fuel, but rather extracts the maximum energy and products from the fuel. The process would use any fuel containing hydrogen and carbon. The most common are the fossil fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas - and biomass such as wood, agricultural, and municipal solid waste. The Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process is flexible in the sense that it can be configured to concentrate production on what is needed for the application. It is foremost an electricity and hydrogen producer. Concentrated carbon dioxide is a byproduct in all configurations. To varying degrees, it can be configured to produce electricity, hydrogen, gasoline, or diesel fuel. It can, thus, be configured to meet critically important national energy requirements. The Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process has a calculated thermal efficiency of up to 92%! This is in contrast to a thermal efficiency of the conventional coal-fired electric power plant of 38%. To place this in perspective, the thermal efficiency goal established by the Department of Energy for the advanced Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle technology is 60% by 2020! A calculated 92% thermal efficiency from the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process directly translates to much lower costs. High thermal efficiency in combination with a means for extracting energy without combustion translates to substantially lower pollution emissions than now attainable or expected to be attained in the future using the best alternative fossil fuel combustion technologies. Typical applications for the IPFC are:
The Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process is expected to generate a significant return on investment. The return on investment is a direct result of high thermal efficiencies attained by the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell in producing electricity and hydrogen. Calculated savings from using an Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process are 40% in lower electricity costs than for coal fired conventional steam plants and 21% lower costs than for an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant. When adding a penalty for sequestration of carbon dioxide as a waste, the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process shows a 57% lower production cost for electricity than for conventional steam plants and 25% from an IGCC plant. Additional savings occurs when sequestration is involved because the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process would produce about half the volume of carbon dioxide and do so in a concentrated form, largely undiluted with other contaminants. In some configurations, the sale of electricity at market prices can reduce cost of hydrogen production to zero. When the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell is configured to produce both electric power and hydrogen, there is a 50% cost advantage for Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell over IGCC when using coal. For the first time, the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell would remove two long-standing roadblocks to a hydrogen economy! The Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process is calculated to produce hydrogen from fossil fuels less expensively than from existing fossil fuel processes. The hydrogen would be available to fuel hydrogen-powered transportation vehicles, to improve refinery processes, or to convert to liquid transportation fuels. This potential would enable the hydrogen economy without a cost penalty. Secondly, the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell is calculated to produce hydrogen from fossil fuels with much less pollution than directly combusting the fossil fuel. This potential would answer the criticism that a hydrogen economy does not make environmental sense. The basic Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process is made possible by integrating two recent technologies, the Hydrogen Plasma Black Reactor, which cracks the fuel into its hydrogen and carbon components, and the Molten Carbonate Direct Carbon Fuel Cell, which electrochemically combines carbon with atmospheric oxygen to produce electricity and carbon dioxide gas. The Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell combined cycle technologies are distinctly advantageous because of the high efficiency of the operation and interaction between the Hydrogen Plasma Black Reactor and the Direct Carbon Fuel Cell. No other combination of technologies is known to have this synergy, which delivers IPFC's expected cost savings and very high efficiency ---
The concentrated hydrogen product is useful without significant further processing for direct sale to petroleum refineries or as a transportation fuel. It can also be used in additional Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell processing to produce liquid transportation fuels (gasoline and diesel). There is a market for the IPFC's carbon dioxide byproduct, which serves to enhance the potential return on investment for the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell. Carbon dioxide gas is both a waste and a commercial product. With the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell, concentrated carbon dioxide can be easily captured and sequestered at some of the lowest costs obtainable. Two factors dominate to deliver low costs: the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process yields a significant reduction in carbon dioxide volume per unit of energy produced due to the high efficiency of the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process; and, the carbon dioxide is in highly concentrated form, which minimizes further processing requirements. The Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell has a distinct market niche in the oil business. The biggest potential market for concentrated carbon dioxide gas is injection into oil and natural gas wells for enhanced production and into coal beds to obtain methane production. This is also a means to sequester carbon dioxide from electricity production. The injection of carbon dioxide into oil fields to enhance production has been used in the United States since 1972 as a means of "Enhanced Oil Recovery." This oil market is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. However, carbon dioxide injection is a major electricity consumer, requiring much more than other Enhanced Oil Recovery methods, such as inert gas and steam injection. Co-location of an Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell plant at an oil field would have significant economic advantages ---
While it has valuable commercial outlets, carbon dioxide from the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process can be sequestered from the biosphere at lower costs than is possible at traditional power plants because the Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell produces it as a concentrated gas. Typical sequestration processes include injection in depleted wells and in deep saline water aquifers to avoid the release of this global warming gas to the atmosphere. Sequestration can also be combined with enhanced oil recovery and methane production from coal seams. The Integrated Plasma Fuel Cell process is scalable. IPFC plants are expected to scale from tens of kilowatts to hundreds of megawatts. It is amenable to installation at existing refineries, at the sites of existing electrical power plants and in smaller applications for specific industrial facilities. Scalability enables decentralization of production and maximum utilization of existing electricity, hydrogen, oil, gas and coal infrastructure. It is anticipated that the market for electricity, hydrogen, and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels will continue to grow and strengthen. The products from this process will support very competitive margins when compared with the best emissions reductions processes for producing electricity and synfuels from fossil fuels and biomass. If you would like to read the remaining 6 sections of the business plan, please email your request together with a completed confidentiality and non-circumvention agreement. Last modified 9/30/04 Web Page Comments? E-mail: webmaster@hceco.com |