Polyfuel Share Discussion Threads

[don muang] 16/7/2008 07:42

Yeep......if it all goes to plan I'll be 'happy' with a continuous modest rise.....
given the present financial market conditions I'm content to sit it out with a few stocks that have potential and await sunny days...

"The prototype represents a key step towards the attainment of PolyFuel's goal to create a reference design with the size, appearance and performance consumers require for increasingly power-hungry notebook computers. PolyFuel will demonstrate this prototype to customers and potential development partners in the coming weeks.

[jonwig] 16/7/2008 07:26

It might be expecting too much, but today's RNS, "Prototype Development" should be worth a modest rise ...

[jonwig] 07/7/2008 11:30

RoL - you could be right, though I think (unsure) ITM are developing their own membranes.
PYF have a whole range, as you say, which would more likely compete against ITM.

BTW, I did hold ITM for a while last year - wasn't profitable.

[robin_of_loxley] 07/7/2008 09:03

by the way, I agree the portable side looks very interesting here too, but when I was reading up on hydrogen membranes and trying to find the best ones (trying to back up people's view on ITM that theirs is best and cheapest) , polyfuel seemed to me to look very good...

the comment in bold seemed to suggest that they may have better relationships than ITM, do you know how developed these relationships with "all of the world's leading automotive fuel cell vehicle manufacturers" are, have they just given them free samples, or are they close to commercialisation?

no advice intended

-------------------------------------------------

HYDROGEN MEMBRANE

In October 2004, PolyFuel introduced a second breakthrough in fuel cell membrane technology that will allow automotive manufacturers to produce smaller, lighter, lower cost, more durable and more efficient automotive fuel cell engines.

PolyFuel's new hydrocarbon membrane for hydrogen fuel cells is being tested at virtually all of the world's leading automotive fuel cell vehicle manufacturers.

With the membrane as the heart of a fuel cell, it should not be surprising that all of the critical requirements of an automotive fuel cell vehicle map directly to the requirements of a hydrogen membrane. In fact, most of the shortcomings of today's automotive fuel cell engine are due to the inability of fluorocarbon membrane technology to meet these requirements.



The membrane is the key to solving the fuel cell engine problem

PolyFuel carefully listened to the needs of automotive fuel cell system developers and engineered a breakthrough hydrogen membrane specifically for their
requirements. The results have been dramatic. First and foremost, the new membrane is based upon a hydrocarbon - rather than a fluorocarbon - polymer that is substantially less expensive. In addition the new membrane can operate more stably at lower levels of humidification, and at both higher and lower operating temperatures. Furthermore, in PolyFuel's accelerated lifetime testing, the new PolyFuel hydrogen membrane technology has demonstrated a 35% to 50% increase in durability when compared to fluorocarbon membranes.

The net result of PolyFuel's hydrogen membrane technology breakthrough is that automakers will be able to design fuel cell engines that will have a lower capital cost, lower operating costs, greater operating flexibility and higher overall efficiency. It's no wonder that the world's leading automotive companies are excited about our hydrogen membrane technology.

[robin_of_loxley] 07/7/2008 08:57

jonwig,

doesnt this suggest a big overlap with ITM?

PolyFuel carefully listened to the needs of automotive fuel cell system developers and engineered a breakthrough hydrogen membrane specifically for their requirements. The results have been dramatic. First and foremost, the new membrane is based upon a hydrocarbon - rather than a fluorocarbon - polymer that is substantially less expensive. In addition the new membrane can operate more stably at lower levels of humidification, and at both higher and lower operating temperatures. Furthermore, in PolyFuel's accelerated lifetime testing, the new PolyFuel hydrogen membrane technology has demonstrated a 35% to 50% increase in durability when compared to fluorocarbon membranes.

The net result of PolyFuel's hydrogen membrane technology breakthrough is that automakers will be able to design fuel cell engines that will have a lower capital cost, lower operating costs, greater operating flexibility and higher overall efficiency. It's no wonder that the world's leading automotive companies are excited about our hydrogen membrane technology.

[jonwig] 07/7/2008 08:55

RoL, hello.

You seem to be up to the mark with your research on PYF. The last 100 or so posts carry plenty of links to their key progress - mobile devices is the crux, whilst membranes tech/production more bread-butter.

Not much (any) overlap with ITM who are in PEMs, utilising hydrogen. PYF are in DMFCs - methanol.

As far as DMFCs go, there are already laptops powered by fuel cells, though at a demo stage, and very expensive! What PYF are doing could be commercially available in a couple of years.

PYF: high risk, high potential reward. At least a decent cash cushion.

[robin_of_loxley] 07/7/2008 08:47

Hi, I have in the past few weeks been reading up and researching ITM and trying to get a view on how competitive their technology is....

When looking around, there I found a lot of good things said about polyfuel, but have only just realised that polyfuel was aim listed, I assumed it was a US company, and didnt even realise it was listed

what do folk here think about polyfuel, the extent of its relationships and collaborations, and of how close to comemrcialisation they are?

are people here in both ITM and PYF? would be interested in views of why they are or why they arent

the comments on the website from pyf seem excellent...



Robin_of_Loxley - 7 Jul'08 - 08:38 - 4699 of 4699 edit

These extracts below re polyfuel look interesting. I have just noticed that polyfuel is also on AIM? ("PolyFuel was spun out of SRI International (formerly the Stanford Research Institute) in 1999, after 14 years of applied membrane research. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and is publicly listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.")

I havent checked out the ticker or share price yet, but are other folk here invested in both? What do other folk here think about polyfuel? How do people think the technologies compare?

What PolyFuel has accomplished is to have fundamentally solved the water management problem that has plagued portable fuel cell developers for nearly a decade. All fuel cells create water as a byproduct of the electricity generation process. The trick is what to do with it.
For this achievement, PolyFuel engineered an entirely new membrane, a breakthrough "membrane electrode assembly" (MEA) design, and a new system design that not only reduces the amount of water byproduct produced during fuel cell operation, but recycles a significant portion of that water directly back through the membrane to the fuel side, where it is reused to generate more electricity.

The new membrane and MEA allows the water to be kept in perfect balance throughout the system. The result is a considerable simplification in the design of the fuel cell system, eliminating components, reducing overall size and weight, and lowering cost. These are significant, as the primary difficulty with fuel cells has been to make them small enough to be able to be integrated into the notebook PC itself.




PolyFuel carefully listened to the needs of automotive fuel cell system developers and engineered a breakthrough hydrogen membrane specifically for their
requirements. The results have been dramatic. First and foremost, the new membrane is based upon a hydrocarbon - rather than a fluorocarbon - polymer that is substantially less expensive. In addition the new membrane can operate more stably at lower levels of humidification, and at both higher and lower operating temperatures. Furthermore, in PolyFuel's accelerated lifetime testing, the new PolyFuel hydrogen membrane technology has demonstrated a 35% to 50% increase in durability when compared to fluorocarbon membranes.

The net result of PolyFuel's hydrogen membrane technology breakthrough is that automakers will be able to design fuel cell engines that will have a lower capital cost, lower operating costs, greater operating flexibility and higher overall efficiency. It's no wonder that the world's leading automotive companies are excited about our hydrogen membrane technology.




The state of the art in fuel cells is closely tied to the membrane, and PolyFuel's best in class, hydrocarbon-based membranes enable a new generation of fuel cells that for the first time can deliver on the long-awaited promise of clean, cost-effective, and non-stop portable power.

PolyFuel has an unmatched capability to rapidly translate the system-level requirements of fuel cell designers and manufacturers into engineered polymer nano-architectures. Such capability – based on PolyFuel's more than 150 combined years of fuel cell experience, world-class polymer nano-architects, and a fundamental patent position covering more than 25 different inventions – also makes PolyFuel an essential development partner and supplier to any company seeking to advance the state of the art in fuel cells. Fuel cells built with PolyFuel's hydrocarbon membranes, as the Company's own performance-leading reference designs have demonstrated, can be smaller, lighter, longer-running, more efficient, less expensive and more robust than those made with other membrane materials.

PolyFuel is working with most of the world's leading portable fuel cell system developers, the majority of whom are household brand name consumer electronics manufacturers. Several of the largest Japanese and Korean consumer electronics companies rank PolyFuel's hydrocarbon membranes as the best portable fuel cell membranes available in the world today, and its DMFC stack and now system technology, which it readily shares with its customers, is unsurpassed.

no advice intended

[jonwig] 03/7/2008 07:26

Doesn't Viaspace ring a bell?
They sent out a leaflet to thousands of UK investors in late 2005 (actually they deny that they sent it out or gave permission to send it).
I even started a thread here to try to get to the bottom of it all:

[don muang] 02/7/2008 22:40

.... and back to VIASPACE Inc / DMFCC .... the following press release is a few weeks old now but gives some idea of anticipated market:

"If the large portable electronic OEMs are successful in developing fuel cell powered portable electronics, five to 10 billion cartridges per year could be sold with potential profits exceeding $1 billion per year. There are plenty of risks, but the potential profits are huge."

[don muang] 02/7/2008 20:10

thanks for the Viaspace link....
and looking on the brightside, at least PYF don't have a contract with TAN to supply batteries ....

Valence Technology Comments on the Tanfield Group PLC Announcement
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Valence Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:VLNC) today announced that the Company has fulfilled, on time, all quantities of previously scheduled orders for battery packs requested by The Tanfield Group PLC (LSE:TAN) for its Smith Electric Vehicles division. Valence has only supplied battery packs to Tanfield; it does not supply battery container systems or any of the other components mentioned by Tanfield in connection with certain supply chain issues referenced in Tanfield's interim results update released on July 1, 2008.

Following Tanfield's interim results update, Valence is awaiting further direction from Tanfield with respect to the timing and/or quantity of any new orders. To date, Tanfield has not supplied Valence with a new forecast for additional purchases under the supply agreement between the two companies.

"Our manufacturing model allows for the flexibility to redirect some product supply to other customers," said Robert L. Kanode, president and CEO. "This will benefit us as we re-evaluate the position of the Tanfield supply agreement in our existing manufacturing schedule."

[jonwig] 02/7/2008 08:03

Hi, Don.

It may be that PYF makes a critical announcement on a big down day for the market ... we can but dream!

There's also a collaboration between PYF and Viaspace regarding methanol cartridges, which ties in with their mobile devices program:

[don muang] 01/7/2008 22:29

jonwig ..... thanks for the continuing info....

...."Strategically, the combined Johnson Matthey-PolyFuel supply of membranes for portable fuel cell market partnering strategy is significant."....

[jonwig] 21/6/2008 09:19

A week since I e-mailed them with links to the MTI membrane research and no reply.

I think this is the first time I've been met with silence when contacting a company - usually the worst response is, "We don't communicate with individual shareholders."

Not good practice to ignore completely.

[don muang] 19/6/2008 20:54

nearly 1m shares in this traded today ..... unless I'm mistaken that's the largest daily volume since Nov 06 ....

[jonwig] 17/6/2008 13:32

Ah, right - I take it you get that from Lv2 access? (I don't have it.)

[callumross] 17/6/2008 13:24

yes but I think the overhang must have gone, simply because you can only buy 10k online now, whereas you could buy 50k first thing. That is my reasoning.

[jonwig] 17/6/2008 12:52

Dunno, Callum. The two trades (100k, 170k) @ 11p could well be delayed reporting from yesterday, and the ones which really did the damage (the 50k seems a bit small for that).
In that case, we've an overhang of over 300k to keep the price down for the time being, whatever the fundamentals might be.

[callumross] 17/6/2008 08:38

that 100k at 11p must have been a buy as you can no longer buy 50k online any more, which you could at 8am, so perhaps the "distressed institution"theory is correct. I remember a similar thing happened with NBI a couple of weeks ago dropping the price 25% in a day. NBI is now higher than before the drop!

[jonwig] 17/6/2008 07:54

We don't know, W-J ... there's a link around post #1050 suggesting a timescale, but I've forgotten just what it was.
Of course, it wouldn't be wise to assume it will be achieved!

[william-just] 17/6/2008 07:45

jonwig.
How long away is the fith step?

[jonwig] 17/6/2008 07:43

Super-n, it's the five-step program to engineer a working fuel-cell powered laptop (or other mobile device), four steps achieved.

It's described in the results and discussed here in posts #1050 and following. Led to the spike in the share price in March, I believe - which has rather unwound!

[morgs] 17/6/2008 05:59

Well, I am tending to agree with the forced sale into a no buyer situation. Scarey that only 50K does it. Well if it is more today we may know.

[supernumerary] 16/6/2008 19:54

jonwig - I must have missed the other part - their Home page header says 'We engineer membranes' - if they do anything else, they're not doing a very good job getting the news out. Time for some heavyweight ramping, I think, lol.

But I can't believe that NIST weren't aware of the MIT work when they awarded PYF their contract last year ( so I guess they thought not so long ago that pyf was still the most competitive supplier in real-world applications.

[callumross] 16/6/2008 19:50

"Of course, producing membranes is only part of what PYF do ... and not the most interesting part, in my view."

Could you expand on that please, jonwig?