Saturday, March 22, 2008; Posted: 06:20 PM
The company, leading the way in advanced and custom manufacturing, is asking for another $1 million grant from the state for its fuel cell program. American Trim will learn its fate next week when the Ohio Department of Development's Third Frontier Commission meets to award a new round of grants.
American Trim has already made great strides with the first $1 million fuel cell grant, said Steve Hatkevich, the company's director of research and development. When the team began its work, it could make only between 100 and 200 prototype fuel cell pieces a year. Now, team members make 100 in a day, because they have advanced the technology of the fuel cell and the technology to make it.
While a combustible engine powers the cars of today, fuel cell engines are expected to power hydrogen cars of tomorrow. American Trim is partnering with General Motors and Ohio State on the grant submission and project. American Trim's goal is to manufacture fuel cell plates for General Motors.
"GM has an ambitious goal: By the middle of the next decade, they want 1 million fuel cell vehicles on the road," Hatkevich said. "If you make a million vehicles, you need a billion plates. In the U.S., 15 million vehicles are produced every year. It's a big number."
One of American Trim's goals is to make the fuel cells affordable. Now, it costs about $100 to make a true prototype of what would be used. The goal is to get it under a quarter. The company will do that by moving from the two minutes it takes to make one now to a 15 second automated cycle, and then to two parts a second.
"Now you can see a billion is possible," Hatkevich said.
Just as workers in Allen County build engines for Ford, they could be doing that for General Motors, in an engine plant of the future.
Ohio has become a player in the technology; it will host an international conference in 2010 usually held in Germany. What it all means locally is jobs and new education on the horizon. Rhodes State College stands ready to develop programs to teach people these new green (clean energy) collar and light blue (highly skilled manufacturing) collar jobs American Trim will need, Hatkevich said.
American Trim team members Larry Wilkerson and Bryan Bishop demonstrated the manufacturing of the new fuel cell plates, much different than the graphite plates used today.
Wilkerson said he's highly motivated to do the research because he can see amazing results (as in a car that produces not pollution but water) at the end of the road.
Bishop hooked up a $1 million press with jumper cables to nearly 500 volts of electricity that shot through coils producing an electromagnetic charge that formed the plate.
Currently, fuel cells are about an eighth of an inch thick. American Trim is working on plates six thousandths of an inch thick, and plans to cut that by a third, with a metal composite thin as paper.
"The second grant would help fund using the same technology to join sides of the fuel cell, to meld it together using the same technology. We'll have a functional equivalent of the graphite plate," Hatkevich said. "It's the natural evolution of the program and we're hopeful the Third Frontier folks see it that way."
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