Franklin Fuel Cells Inc. was incorporated on October 23rd, 2001 as a result of efforts by a serial entrepreneur and a venture capitalist that recognized the value of a new technology that had been developed at the Chemical Engineering Department of the University of Pennsylvania. This new technology was a fuel cell that could operate directly on current hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and many other current and future fuel candidates.
Frank Slattery and Enertech Capital realized that a fuel cell that could operate on current fuels was a major breakthrough and could remove the barrier of waiting for a hydrogen economy to commercialize fuel cells. Together, Frank and Enertech brought together the financial resources to initially fund the company in April of 2002. Armed with exclusive license of this technology from the University of Pennsylvania and the initial funding, Franklin Fuel Cells began a proof of concept phase of development in which the technology was incubated out of the university. During Phase I of development FFC was able to prove out the claims of the technology and scale up the size of the cell geometry to industrialize standards and do so with readily available manufacturing techniques.
Throughout Phase I of the company’s development and continuing today is the close relationship between FFC and the inventors of the technology at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Raymond Gorte and Dr. John Vohs. Ray and John are highly respected experts in the field of direct oxidation of solid oxide fuel cells, below please find brief biographies of Dr. Gorte and Dr. Vohs:
Dr. Ray J. Gorte received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1981 and joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in the same year. Dr. Gorte is currently the Russell Pearce and Elizabeth Crimian Heuer Professor of Chemical Engineering and also served as Chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering from 1995 to 2000. He is the author of more than 180 publications in refereed journals. His work on fuel cells has been featured on NPR Science Friday, Reuters, and MSNBC.
Dr. John M. Vohs received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware in 1988 and joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 where he is currently the Carl V.S. Patterson Professor of Chemical Engineering and chairman of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His research group is well known for its work on the development of solid oxide fuel cells that operate directly on hydrocarbon fuels (in collaboration with Prof. Ray Gorte). FFC is now in Phase II of the company’s development and is focused on developing the technology commercialization. In this phase FFC is improving the technologies performance and reliability, as well as, continuing to reduce the cost to manufacture. Franklin is also working with other fuel cell companies to integrate our fuel cell technology into stacks and systems for various applications.
