Innovative concepts from Electrodes to Stacks

Completed

Hydrogen and Fuel Cells(Fuel Cells, Stationary applications)
Hydrogen and Fuel Cells(Fuel Cells, Mobile applications)

Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Chemistry)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Chemical Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Prof A Kucernak
Chemistry
Imperial College London

Standard

EPSRC

01 February 2015

31 July 2018

42 months

£1,004,390

Energy

London

Energy : Energy

Prof A Kucernak, Chemistry, Imperial College London

Dr D Brett, Chemical Engineering, University College London
Professor R Chen, Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, Loughborough University
Dr P Shearing, Chemical Engineering, University College London

Project Contact, National Physical Laboratory (NPL)
Project Contact, Arcola Energy Limited
Project Contact, Amalyst Limited
Project Contact, Intelligent Energy

The goal of this Korea-UK research initiative is to address Research theme 1 (Innovative concepts from Electrodes to stack) of the EPSRC-KETEP Call for Collaborative Research with Korea on Fuel Cell Technologies. The proposal also covers some aspects of Research theme 2 (Predictive control for performance and degradation mitigation). Hence, this research is associated with improving the lifetime and performance of polymer electrolyte fuel cells.Within this project we will develop new corrosion resistant catalyst supports and catalyse those supports utilising a new catalysis technique. We will also examine the development of porous bipolar plates and see how we can integrate those bipolar plates and catalysts within a fuel cell. We will trial the materials in test stacks and look at the performance and longevity of these new materials. Parallel to this work, we will use state of the art x-ray tomography and other imaging techniques to assess the performance of the materials under real operating conditions. Information from these tests will allow us to develop a methodological framework to simulate the performance of the fuel cells. This framework will then be used to build more efficient control strategies for our higher performance fuel cell systems.We will also build a strong and long-lasting collaborative framework between Korea and the UK for both academic research and commercial trade. The project will benefit from the complementary strengths of the Korean and UK PEFC programmes, and represents a significant international activity in fuel cell research that includes a focus on the challenging issues of cost reduction and performance enhancement. The project will have particularly high impact and added value due to a strong personnel exchange programme with researchers spending several months in each other's labs; highly relevant industrial collaboration; and links with the H2FC Supergen. We have strong support from industrial companies in both the UK and Korea who will support our goals of developing new catalysts for fuel cells (Amalyst - UK, and RTX Corporation - Korea), new corrosion resistant porous bipolar plates (NPL-UK; Hyundai Hysco and Hankook tire (Korea)), and fuel cell and system integrators (Arcola Energy and Intelligent Energy (UK)).

06/01/15