Ballard Announces New Improvements in Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology for Drones.
On December 22nd Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP; TSX: BLDP) announced that the company has developed a next generation high performance fuel cell propulsion system to power unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones.
We’ve been particularly interested in any new developments in hydrogen fuel cell technology given the potential for higher flying time as an alternative to the restrictive current flying time of 25 minutes or less found on most commercially available multi-copters. This next generation fuel cell propulsion system is set to deliver a number of important advances, namely, increased power density, resulting from a new membrane electrode assembly (MEA) design. Additionally, reduced costs that result from a combination of new MEA and one-step fuel cell stack sealing process will also provide major benefits, along with an extended lifetime. The increase in rated power, without any appreciable increase in size or weight, is a particularly significant development for UAV applications.
Given the perceived improvements over the technology we first reported back in June 2017, we reached out to Phil Robinson Vice President of Unmanned Systems at Protonex, a Ballard subsidiary, to hear from him directly on the details and potential impact of this announcement.
