Wärtsilä and Hitachi Zosen will utilize and combine their extensive experience in technology and business development to provide this new and competitive fuel cell based power solution for the distributed energy market in Japan.

The combined heat and power (CHP) applications, which can run on either city gas or biogas, will utilize solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology from Wärtsilä. The applications will be developed in cooperation by both companies, and marketed by Hitachi Zosen.

‘The cooperation between Wärtsilä and Hitachi Zosen provides an important opportunity to optimize future fuel cell products to meet customer requirements, and to facilitate optimal application development,’ says Erkko Fontell, Director of Fuel Cells for Wärtsilä Finland.

Since Wärtsilä’s solid oxide fuel cells can efficiently utilize natural gas, city gas, and biogas as fuel, they produce almost zero nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and particulate emissions.

Wärtsilä is a leading developer of fuel cell products based on planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology. The development is supported by close collaboration with Topsoe Fuel Cell in Denmark and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Wärtsilä has delivered a fuel cell unit producing electric and heating power to the Vaasa Housing Fair site in western Finland. This groundbreaking Wärtsilä FC20 system has proven to be extremely successful.

The power generation unit at Vaasa, which runs on landfill gas, has been in operation for more than 1500 hours, producing electricity and heat for local households without creating any significant greenhouse gas emissions.