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THE FUTURE OF PLATINUM MINING
Lunar platinum and alcohol fuel cells (part2)
Article # : platinum182
Even if such devices only use a miniscule quantity of platinum, the potential plainly exists to sell hundreds of millions, if not billions of such devices each year (if we aggregate cell phones, camcorders, MP3 players, and laptops together with military uses, RVs, and so on). For example, PolyFuel is a company that produces membranes for DFMC products. At the July 2005 Nano-Tech Forum on Fuel Cells, PolyFuel presented a detailed report concerning both the expected future growth of demand for methanol fuel cells and the technical benefits of this new technology and they predict the large-scale consumer introduction of this technology in June 2007, at least in Asia. Even if we limit DMFC applications to the high tech consumer markets, the DMFC industry could rapidly come to produce over one hundred million new DMFC power units per year and if each new unit requires merely 1 gram of platinum, such production will nonetheless require several million ounces of PGM per year, new demand that will add substantial upwards pressure to current market price of platinum.
In addition to this acknowledged source of demand for methanol fuel cells, the author now proposes a new use that could create demand that dwarfs the markets described previously, specifically the deployment of alcohol-powered fuel cells as an interim step in providing electricity to rural India and China. Anil K. Rajvanshi, Director of the Nimbkar Agricultural Institute in Maharashtra, India has recently written that “it is a matter of shame for all of us that even 56 years after independence, 63% of all rural households in India do not have electricity and use kerosene for lighting.” Running power grid electricity into every rural hamlet in India, China, and elsewhere in Asia, as well as South America and Africa, will cost trillions of dollars and require decades to accomplish, yet that task is essential for the economic development of billions of human beings.
Source: thespacereview.com