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Actually Manabouttown let me clarify my trading, because the careless wording I used has misled. When the shareprice shot over 50p I assumed a placing was coming and sold 50% of my shares. When the announcement of the “takeover” was made, for the reasons below, I was not inclined to buy back in.
My buying back the 50% I sold depends on a better justification of the valuation of W2T, an explanation of who the major shareholders will be, clarity of who will be on the Board. I am currently happy with PHE, less convinced about W2T.
Opera star, as I recall the idea was to use fuel cells to provide electricity for sale, and/or to provide electricity to fuel the G3. As vehicles came to the fore the fuel cell use was relegated to powering the G3, but so far with a small test system that has not been economic due to the cost of purification equipment for such small volumes. However I will be surprised to see AFC/W2T working together, as they seem to have avoided each other of late. W2T attention has been focussed on PHE, which given their greed over the takeover share swap I am somewhat relieved about, as AFC is my major holding. I have reduced my PHE holding since the takeover was announced by 50%.
Thank you for the elementary chemistry Telephone man . Yes I had forgotten that. Silly me.
From what I have heard manabouttown ties between AFC and W2T do seem to Be non-existent. The interesting thing is that given what they knew about W2T why did they value their shares so cheaply when they were cancelled. An informed assessment of the worth of W2T? Should this be factored into the “takeover” by PHE?
Hi operastar, PHE are quite possibly able to produce a syngas containing more than 50% H2 by now but we have to remember that the constituent gases have different weights per mol which is why the H2 weighs so little when it accounts for such a high percentage of the syngas as a whole.
Carbone monoxide = 44.01g/mol
Methane = 16.04g/mol
Hydrogen = 2g/mol
The AFC order was placed when Kieth Alaun was CEO. DR is not so keen and may be looking at other suppliers if ever used. The schematic for the Protos site does show the hydrogen separation area with the PSA etc but has a blue dotted line around it which does indicate that the intention is to include it at a later date . There is no indication of a Fuel cell in there. The recent pictorial diagram DID show one however. Peel themselves are obviously very keen on the hydrogen side so if they are the "customer" then it will happen quite quickly. I think the only reason for the inclusion of a fuel cell was the close association of AFC, W2T and PHE . It also enhanced the image of the system as a green generator of electricity. The figure of 50% hydrogen was obtained from tests on the G3 Demonstrator using tyre crumb feedstock (very hydrogen rich). This was subsequently claimed for the commercial DMG using computer modeling. The actual percentage depends on the feedstock and the "tuning" of the gasifier ( yes I will use that term even if it is now not in favour). I assumed back then, that somewhere near that percentage ( i.e . 12.5 tonne) could be separated to be used in the Fuel cell. The fact that only 1 tonne has been quoted is ether down to the very poor efficiency of the PSA unit and/or the purity needed. I think the only justification for including a fuel cell is that it could be used to generate electricity if the revenue stream for hydrogen dried up temporarily.
That's true, stokey. Initially the intention is to use all of the syngas to generate electricity. Then at some later stage if they want to produce pure hydrogen they will have to employ a PSA system which will cost in the region of £5M I believe. If they decide to produce hydrogen, then at that point they will have to decide how best to use/sell the hydrogen to maximise their revenue, and that's the point I was making in my earlier posts. In my view it is unlikely that it will be viable for the owners/operators of the DMG system to buy a fuel cell system from AFC in order to generate and sell electricity. They will probably find that it will be more profitable to sell the purified hydrogen as a fuel for EVs. Anyway, that's at least a year away.
You may recall that in March 2017 PHE placed an order with AFC to buy a small-scale fuel cell system for the prototype at Thornton Park, and paid a deposit on it. It was never delivered and I suspect that it will not be delivered.
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/PHE/afc-fuel-cell-order-q8ega2h33xmylm2.html
Piltick - Thanks for your 09.48 post. I would query one thing I was not aware of any current suggestion that fuel cells from AFC or anybody else will be used to generate electricity. If you read the planning statement from page 13 which describes the process it goes from the thermal chamber to the genset without going through a fuel cell.
I don't doubt that stokey.
The reason I raised this point is because there was discussion recently (perhaps on the AFC BB) about if and when PHE might employ AFC's fuel cells.
My point is simply that the owner/operator of the DMG unit will presumably sell it's product to whoever produces the highest revenue, so if they can earn more by selling purified hydrogen for use with EVs rather than using AFC's fuel cells to produce and sell electricity, then under those circumstances they will surely not employ AFC's fuel cells.
And of course they would have to buy or lease the fuel cell system from AFC, which would add further cost, not insignificant.
Piltick - In relatio to your 23.08 post if you assume that the hydrogen is sold at £6.50 a kg and that 2tonne of Hydrogen is produced that would give you a daily revenue of £13,000 or £4,550,000 a year. An operator would therefore recover the capital cost of selling the hydrogen within 3 years.
Away back in July 2017 in an interview on Proactive KA stated that the composition of the syngas produced from the DMG unit was typically 45% CO, 45% hydrogen, and the remaining 10% consisting of methane and a little bit of CO2. Since then I believe the ratio of hydrogen was increased to somewhere over 50% but I don't know what the latest figures are.
Anyway, at that stage the hydrogen is clearly not pure enough to sell as a separate product for use in EVs or to generate electricity using fuel cells, so in the absence of any further processing the entire syngas would be used to fuel a generator to produce electricity.
In order to produce hydrogen that is purified to an acceptable level to be used in EVs or by AFC fuel cells, Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) equipment would have to be employed. The cost of this equipment is in the same ball-park as the DMG unit itself, so clearly sale of the purified hydrogen would have to produce a much higher level of revenue to justify the additional cost.
I understand that the AFC fuel cells do not require the same level of hydrogen purity as do EVs but I suspect that there would be little or not difference in the cost of producing either level of purity. So having gone to the additional expense of purifying the hydrogen, the question that will need to be considered by the owner/operator of the DMG unit is how to maximise their revenue: a) sell the hydrogen for use by EVs, or b) use the hydrogen with AFC's fuel cells to produce and sell electricity.