subject: 3rd Annual Conference- Fuel Cell Durability & Performance 2007 - Stationary, Automotive & Portable [print this page] The 3rd annual meeting in The Knowledge Foundations Fuel Cells Durability & Performance series will provide an interdisciplinary discussion forum for fuel cell developers, manufacturers and suppliers working in the fields of fuel cells materials, stacks, system design, fabrication, and testing. The objectives of this meeting are: to discuss the latest innovations and emerging durability and performance issues common for all fuel cell systems, and specific to different types, designs, and sizes of fuel cells; to bring the attention of the testing systems, standards, and regulations development community to the current hurdles preventing fuel cells systems from large scale commercialization.
Table of Contents :
Thursday, November 15, 2007
8:00 Registration, Exhibit Viewing/Poster Setup, Coffee and Pastries
Nancy Garland, PhD, Acting Fuel Cell Team Leader, Office of Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies, The U.S. Department of Energy
The Department of Energys Hydrogen Program recently initiated new research and development projects aimed at reducing component cost and increasing stack durability and performance of transportation and stationary fuel cells. Updated progress in the Program including highlights from the new projects from will be presented. There has been recent interest globally in the introduction of fuel cells to the marketplace because they can drastically reduce the time to recharge/refuel and because of their reliability. New market transformation activities in the Program such as forklifts for distribution centers will be discussed.
9:30 Technology Development Needs for Stationary and Transportation Fuel Cells
Tom Jarvi, PhD, Director, Technology Development, UTC Power, United Technologies
To enable broad commercial applicability, fuel cell technologies must be made significantly more affordable while maintaining or enhancing durability and performance. Previously, industry and academia have focused primarily on understanding and enhancing performance. In recent years, it has become apparent that the performance requirements of many applications can largely be met, and the focus has shifted to increasing durability and reducing cost. This talk will attempt to clarify the significant challenge that simultaneously meeting cost and durability requirements represents for fuel cell products.
10:00 An Automotive Perspective on Durability Protocol Challenges from Single Cells to Fuel Cell Vehicle Systems and Industry Needs
Durability of PEM technology in dynamic ranges, though much progress has been made in recent years, are not yet up to the level of conventional vehicle powertrains. Public durability protocols (from the USFCC, US DOE, JARI, for example) are helpful for establishing a baseline for the state of the art of the technology in single cells. But these arent yet commonized due to a number of reasons. Also, it is too early to standardize the protocols as the technology evolves, but guidelines or protocols are needed. There are many challenges involved in establishing such single cell protocols, due to different operating conditions. Also, there are potential degradation effects not only to the catalyst and membrane, but also due to hydrogen impurities. For automotive applications, fuel cell systems, durability protocols are considered intellectual property, making it difficult to establish a common guideline or standard. However there is a draft standard initiated at SAE (J2722) which is attempting to establish a drive durability cycle baseline.
10:30 Refreshment Break, Exhibit/Poster Viewing
11:00 MEA Development for Automotive Applications
Kev Adjemian, PhD, Manager, Fuel Cell Laboratory, and Akihiro Iiyama, PhD, Expert Leader, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., Japan
Since the inception of the fuel cell program at Nissan Motor Company, great developmental strides have been made in both component and system optimization. This work has resulted in Nissan Motor Company providing the first fuel cell vehicle for commercial taxi service in Japan. Nevertheless, further improvements to the durability and performance of the MEA are required for mass-commercialization. This is being carried out by first understanding the underlying mechanisms followed by formulating effective counter-measures and new materials. Using this approach, major advancements towards fuel cell commercialization are being realized.
11:30 On-Road Experiences with FC Degradation from FCV Learning Demonstration
Jennifer Kurtz, Senior Engineer, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
After the first two years of DOEs fuel cell vehicle Learning Demonstration project, NREL has amassed a significant amount of on-road fuel cell vehicle performance information. This data has been analyzed to determine fuel cell voltage degradation, and whether there are any detectable dominant factors affecting the degradation rates. NREL will present the latest public results on this topic from their analysis.
12:00 Fast Conditioning - Impacts on System Performance & Life Cycle Cost
Kevin Beverage, Lead Process Engineer, Electrochemical Technology Group, Nuvera Fuel Cells, Inc.
Conditioning of PEM fuel cells is a necessary, yet not well understood process that is required before a fresh PEM can reach 100% of its expected performance. When manufacturing commercial stacks, the time requirement becomes a critical consideration for the overall cost of the product since traditional conditioning procedures demand anywhere from 8-24 hours of operation, adding a significant premium due to overhead. An investigation into the current hypotheses regarding conditioning mechanisms is presented as well as results showing 1 hour conditioning of subscale stacks and 1.5 hour conditioning of full scale commercial stacks. Ongoing work toward reducing the necessary conditioning time to a target of 10 minutes will be discussed as well as the potential durability impacts of certain procedures used to accelerate conditioning.
12:30 Luncheon Sponsored by:The Knowledge FoundationTechnology Commercialization Alliance2:00 GDL Durability Testing at SGL Group - The Carbon CompanyPeter Wilde, PhD, Director, Fuel Cell Components, SGL Group - The Carbon Company, SGL Technologies GmbH, GermanyFuel Cell components are subject to degradation and are changing their properties over time. Although there are operating conditions which can cause faster and slower degradation rates using identical cell components, the desire to have more chemically stable components is also present. This paper gives an overview of SGLs activities to assess and quantify GDL degradation under selected conditions. The emphasis is on ex situ tests which are conducted in designed experiments. Results allow for extrapolation and analysis of the main external effects on durability.2:30 Low-Cost, Durable Kynar Based Fuel Cell MembranesJames T. Goldbach, PhD, Research Scientist, Corporate and External Research Dept, Arkema Inc.Arkema has developed a new approach to PEM design whereby the mechanical property requirements are decoupled from the other desired properties. This decoupling is accomplished by blending two very dissimilar polymers, a fluoropolymer such as Kynar poly(vinylidene fluoride) with any one of a range of non-fluorinated polyelectrolytes. Using this blending process along with inexpensive starting materials, many different membrane compositions can be produced at significantly reduced cost over traditional methodologies. The newest membrane generation utilizing Arkemas polymer blending approach has shown a dramatic increase in durability. Continued testing of this membrane in standard fuel cell durability tests shows excellent performance compared to industry material benchmarks. The latest results of these tests will be reviewed along with future testing plans.3:00 Strategies and Technologies to Improve the Durability of Membranes and MEAs for PEM Fuel CellsGonzalo Escobedo, PhD, Senior Engineer, DuPont Fuel Cells, E.I. du Pont de NemouFor more information, please visit :http://www.aarkstore.com/reports/3rd-Annual-Conference-Fuel-Cell-Durability-Performance-2007-Stationary-Automotive-Portable-Devices-1744.htmlby: Aarkstore Enterprise
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