Alicat Scientific Releases FusionFlow Gas Mixer Product Line

For making high-accuracy custom gas blends from 2 to 10 sources

Feb 26, 2025

Revised on March 19th, 2025
Alicat® Scientific of Tucson, Arizona, a mass flow and pressure control instrumentation manufacturer, announces FusionFlow™, a family of gas blending systems for industrial gas mixing or mixing of gases for laboratories. A FusionFlow user can create their own precision‑mixed gases on the fly or eliminate the waste of buying a full bottle of a rarely used mix.

To achieve the highest precision and flexibility for the gas mixing process, the FusionFlow lines of gas mixers incorporate Alicat’s multivariate and multi‑gas compatible mass flow controllers. Their high accuracy and rapid control speed permit extensive tailoring of the mixtures, in both pressure control and quantification of flow. The mixing system takes full advantage of a unique strength of Alicat instruments: they can control mass flow rate, or control pressure while metering mass flow. Meaning the gas mixers can blend to obtain a fixed flow rate, or blend while maintaining a precise pressure. With an Alicat MFC’s flexibility in flowing different gases, up to 49 gases can be selected in the FusionFlow gas mixer, changing gas species at need without recalibrating mass flow controllers or stocking inventory.

Salman Daud, Alicat Scientific’s Vice President of Sales said, “FusionFlow products show thoughtful attention in all areas. The system can even account for the volume of plumbing, estimating when a new mix is reaching the customer’s process. The software itself is informative, graphical, and easy to use. You see the effect whether you’re changing gas sources or remotely entering a script for an evolving process. FusionFlow products exemplify Alicat’s approach to optimizing products for the customer’s best experience and efficiency.”

All the MXM models feature touch‑screen interfaces to program gas sources, fill rates, blend proportions, dispensing totals, and pressure setpoints. Scripting can automate changes to blends on the fly, and logically respond to events. Data logging keeps track of outputs over time, and internet connectivity permits remote programming and monitoring of the gas mixers.

Available configurations include self‑contained benchtop models that incorporate up to 6 mass flow controllers within the unit housing. These MFCs can supply mixing from 100 sccm full scale to 100 SLPM full scale, per channel. This interplay can produce highly rarified trace gas mixes.

Other configurations support external controllers and up to 10 sources, running at potentially higher flow ranges. Alicat’s mass flow controllers can flow up to 12,000 SLPM per channel, permitting cumulative rate of mixed gas flows up to 100,000 SLPM from a single FusionFlow unit—performing as an industrial gas mixer.

The FusionFlow product lines add a new dimension to Alicat’s diversified technologies—Alicat now offers precision gas blending systems.

FusionFlow IMX and MXM gas blenders
Left: Alicat FusionFlow MXM lab gas mixer. Right: Alicat FusionFlow IXM industrial gas mixer.
Photo credit (if required): Alicat Scientific, ©2025.

Enabling Liquid Hydrogen Fuel Systems in Maritime Innovation

Alicat MCRQ Mass Flow Controllers Support TU Delft Hydro Motion Team’s Hydrogen Boat for the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge

Empowering Discovery on Water

The transition to sustainable energy in the maritime sector demands more than ambition, it requires precision. That is why Alicat Scientific is proud to support the TU Delft Hydro Motion Team as a Bronze Partner in their groundbreaking 2025 campaign: to design, build, test and race Mira, a liquid hydrogen-powered boat at the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge.

Equipping this innovative project with our MCRQ mass flow controllers enables the team to manage hydrogen fuel delivery safely and accurately, helping them prove that liquid hydrogen can power the next generation of clean marine propulsion.

Mira at the official reveal, Hydro Motion Team’s 2025 liquid hydrogen-powered boat.

Figure 1: Mira at the official reveal. Hydro Motion Team’s 2025 liquid hydrogen-powered boat.

The Challenge: Making Hydrogen Work for Maritime Transport

The goal of the TU Delft Hydro Motion Team is as ambitious as it is inspiring: to design, build, test, and race a fully functioning boat powered by liquid hydrogen, all within one year, and to compete at the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge 2025. But beyond the competition itself, the team’s mission reaches further. By proving that a boat can operate successfully on liquid hydrogen, they aim to spark broader innovation across the maritime sector and demonstrate hydrogen’s potential as a clean, scalable alternative to fossil fuels.

This project builds on the team’s past successes with compressed hydrogen, already a proven, zero-emission marine fuel. But as the team pushes for longer range and greater onboard efficiency, storage volume and energy density become the next major challenges. To solve this, the team chose to work with liquid hydrogen. With a volumetric energy density three times higher than compressed hydrogen at 350 bar, liquid hydrogen offers a powerful solution for saving space and extending endurance, key requirements in performance vessels.

But storing and using liquid hydrogen introduces challenges. The fuel must be kept at -253°C, requiring insulated cryogenic tanks. The team addresses this with a custom double-walled, vacuum-insulated carbon-fibber tank system, limiting heat ingress to just 7 watts, equivalent to a small LED bulb. To avoid wasting energy, waste heat from the fuel cell is used to bring hydrogen up to the required ~20°C operating temperature before reaching the fuel cell.

These trade-offs (boil-off rates, tank volume, storage weight, and onboard vaporization) are exactly the kinds of real-world constraints this project is designed to explore. And while Mira is a compact, foiling boat, the broader engineering question remains: could a system like this scale to larger vessels, such as ferries? That is the kind of thinking Alicat is excited to support with partners who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

The Role of Alicat: Flow Control After Vaporization

In Mira’s hydrogen system, hydrogen is stored as a cryogenic liquid. Before reaching the fuel cell, it passes through a vaporizer, transitioning into gas at ambient temperature. This phase is critical: delivering gas at the right pressure and flow requires stable regulation, fast feedback, and precise control.

Simplified diagram of the Hydro Motion Team’s hydrogen system.

Figure 2: Simplified diagram of the Hydro Motion Team’s hydrogen system.

To meet this need, the team integrated the Alicat MCRQ mass flow controller immediately downstream of the vaporizer. This device manages the mass flow of hydrogen gas into the fuel cell and enables:

  • Delivers stable and precise feed pressure to the fuel cell.
  • Measures hydrogen consumption through real-time mass flow monitoring
  • Monitors pressure and temperature to help prevent fuel cell issues like dehydration or fuel starvation.
  • Supports test validation and real-world performance optimization.

Compact, ATEX Zone 2 certified, and designed for fast system response, the MCRQ integrates easily into the tight constraints of a race-ready vessel. Its role is vital during system development, helping the team collect data, tune parameters, and prepare for race-day performance. In short, it helps translate bold hydrogen engineering into operational reliability.

Alicat’s MCRQ unit mounted inside the Hydro Motion Team’s hydrogen control system.

Figure 3:  Alicat’s MCRQ unit mounted inside the Hydro Motion Team’s hydrogen control system.

Why the MCRQ Was Selected

The Hydro Motion Team, together with our application engineers, selected the Alicat MCRQ series for its proven capability in low-flow hydrogen gas applications, offering a powerful combination of precision, speed, and safety. Key features that influenced the decision include:

  • Flow range of 0–1.5 g/s, which translates to ±0.01 g/s uncertainty at a nominal 1 g/s flow, small enough to maintain consistent fuel cell output.
  • 4–20 mA analog output, chosen specifically for its high-speed update rates (kHz range)
  • ATEX Zone 2 IIC certification, requiring minimal additional safety infrastructure.
  • Upstream valve position, enabling precise regulation of downstream feed pressure, supporting target values like the ~2.5 bar commonly seen in fuel cell stacks.
  • ±1.0% accuracy of reading (or ±0.2% of full scale)

Together, these features provide the team with a robust, compact, and responsive solution, a key enabler of real-world testing and a step toward scalable, clean hydrogen propulsion.

Competition Progress and What Comes Next

The TU Delft team unveiled the boat, Mira, earlier this year and is now deep into the testing phase, preparing for the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge 2025.

As testing progresses, the team continues optimizing the integration between hydrogen storage, vaporization, and control systems. Alicat’s instrumentation plays a central role in capturing this performance data for analysis and refinement.

This partnership represents more than a technical contribution. It reflects our belief that sustainable innovation thrives where education, engineering, and real-world experimentation meet.

By supporting the Hydro Motion Team and their work on Mira, Alicat contributes to:

  • Advancing liquid hydrogen fuel systems in marine transport
  • Empowering hands-on engineering education
  • Promoting practical low-emission propulsion technologies

We are honoured to be part of this project and proud to know that our instruments are helping to steer the future of clean maritime energy.

Together, we are not just measuring hydrogen. We are helping to Fuel the Future.

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