Fuel Cells

»Tailored material properties make to possible for us to drive the technological development of fuel cells in order to achieve specific goals and thus contribute to reductions in cost. In addition, we are investigating degradation processes, which have a decisive influence on the durability of fuel cells in, for example, the field of household energy usage.«

Dr Alexander Dyck, Head of Division Fuel Cells

Fuel cells offer a potential for savings of up to 40 percent – in terms of primary energy consumption – in the area of household energy provision with heat and electricity. If we wish to utilise this potential, we must tailor the systems precisely to their applications in order to make forecasts of our future energy requirements. It is to this end that we are measuring the energy requirements of modern buildings and comparing this data with the load profiles of CHP units.

Furthermore, in order to accelerate the development of new and more cost-effective fuel cell stack generation with lower usage of materials, we are intensively researching degradation processes such as, for example, the mechanical stresses that arise during the operation of a gas diffusion layer (GDL). Among the techniques that we use to do this are imaging procedures such as scanning electron microscopy and micro-CT for both GDLs and membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs).