Minutes, Solar Nova Scotia AGM

January 30th, 2003

The meeting came to order at 7:30pm in the Dalhousie University Sexton Campus boardroom.

Last year's Frankenminutes will be reassembled and approved by email later.

Present

Presentation

Aaron Barkhouse: Hydrogen Fuel Cells

What are hydrogen fuel cells? These are a way to get electricity from hydrocarbons with no emissions. Performance is like a battery, but continuous, with no moving parts and no lubricants.

The cathode and anodes must have a precious metal catalyst coating, which does not get used up in the process. However, impure H and O sources will "poison" a platinum catalyst. In the home, fuel cell units typically produce hot water as well, as the unit operates at between 70 and 100ºC, and heat is given off during the reaction.

Where do fuel cells fit in? You need hydrogen, which you can make it from renewables e.g. a reverse fuel cell, or from fossil fuel, much more efficient than combustion of any kind, or photocatalytic conversion.

Problems: right now gas is just too cheap, because environmental and longterm costs are not considered. Also, there is no hydrogen infrastructure at the moment. Hydrogen has major storage problems; it needs to be compressed or cooled with accompanying equipment.

Aaron's research centered on testing various configurations of superlattices made of alternating layers a few atoms thick, of nickel and platinum, which reduces the amount of platinum necessary. In combinatorial metal science, many different compositions of metals can be made on the same plate. The layers are sputterered onto the substrate where heavy ions are used to hit the depositing metal target in a vacuum which causes the metal atoms to splash onto the substrate. Wedge-shaped deposits in two dimensions created all possible variants of thicknesses for each metal. In the coming summer, he will be testing the different compositions that he produced during this research.

Treasurer's Report

We are in very sound financial shape. Memeberships and corporate memberships are up, about $1000 over our yearly costs.

The national solar organization sent us over $4000, our share of the profits of Rise And Shine 2000. This is the first time the national solar conference made money.

Election Of Officers

Robert moved that we adopt the slate. Seconded by Georges.

Welcome to our new corporate members, Solar Stat Equipment. Georges will be putting a catalog of solar-related equipment, panels, inverters online and will be servicing the western-central Annapolis Valley, working out of Granville Ferry.