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Report by the CERIC’s expert group on fuel cells released

One of the greatest challenges of our time is to mitigate the global climate change caused by anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases, mainly generated by use of fossil fuels. A critical part of the solution is to substitute energy generation based on fossil fuels by the more renewable energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal power and others) and one of the main issues is to provide efficient energy storage for a large subset of intermittent energy sources. This can be achieved by various means, such as physical storage (e.g., pump hydro storage, flywheels, compressed air, etc.), and/or chemical conversion (e.g., batteries, hydrogen and ammonia generation and storage, artificial carbon-based fuels). The second family of the energy storage solutions is close to maturity for commercial deployment, therefore research and development proceeds at a fast pace and enjoys significant investments at all levels.

For this reason, and following the recommendation by the ISTAC of CERIC, in 2019, to follow up the pilot on batteries[1], with a pilot on fuel cells, in November 2021, an external scientific advisory group of appointed distinguished experts (Benedetto Bozzini, Sara Cavaliere, Jakub Drnec, Moniek Tromp) produced a report on fuel cells, which identifies the bottlenecks and needs for upgrades of the CERIC infrastructure in this domain, on the basis of the CERIC Science and RI development strategy, towards the production of the CERIC Research and Infrastructure Roadmap.

The newly released report focuses on the assessment of CERIC activities in the field of electrochemical energy conversion by various types of fuel cells, and includes recommendations to enhance CERIC’s role towards the fuel cell community.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT ON ZENODO

Report’s table of contents:
Introduction
Overview on fuel cell technologies

Membranes

Electrocatalysis

Fuel cells durability issues

EU initiatives on fuel cells and electrolysis
State-of-the-art techniques and facilities in CERIC
New techniques / facilities proposed for CERIC tailored to fuel cell research
Conclusions

[1] B. Bozzini, A. Iadecola, L. Stievano, Report on CERIC’s Expert Group on Batteries, 2020, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3891479