News

CERIC open access offer for energy research: new JRC facilities available

Location
Trieste

Following the positive evaluation by the International Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee – ISTAC of CERIC, two Energy storage facilities of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Petten (the Netherlands), with state-of-the-art techniques in the field of fuel cells and batteries research, have been recently included in the CERIC open access offer.

“The integration of FCTEST and BESTEST in our open offer represents a great added value for CERIC – comments Jana Kolar, CERIC Executive Director – offering a very wide range of testing devices for different applications in the field of energy research. The users will thus be able to apply for services supporting groundbreaking discoveries as well as testing of the prototypes, using a single access point”.

In particular, the Fuel Cell and Electrolyser Testing facility (FCTEST) was established to support developments in Regulation, Codes and Standards through the validation of testing procedures and measurement methodologies for the performance assessment of fuel cells. It is also used in the Clean Hydrogen Partnership for Europe for pre-normative research and harmonization of fuel cells and electrolyser test protocols and testing methodologies and their experimental validation.
FCTEST facility allows testing of low and high-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell and electrolysis test stations in single cell and stack. Solid oxide fuel cells and electrolysis test stations can be characterized in single cell and stack configurations, and there is also the possibility of testing under simulated environmental conditions, including temperature, relative ambient humidity, vibrations, and shocks.

On the other hand, the Battery Energy Storage Testing Laboratory (BESTEST) features state-of-the-art equipped facilities for analyzing performance of battery materials and devices by cycling them under controlled environmental conditions (temperature and relative humidity). This facility also provides integrated thermal analysis and gas analysis systems for battery components testing – used for Simultaneous Thermal Analysis (STA) of battery components and subsequent analysis of the emitted gases. This combination of analytical techniques gives a meaningful analysis of the battery components’ thermal degradation under controlled conditions (temperature, heating rate, gas environment, etc.). Moreover, in BESTEST, it is also possible to perform in-situ thermal imaging, electrochemical measurements, cell preparation, pre-and post-test battery cell tear-down and post-mortem diagnosis.

For more detailed information about the techniques and equipment available at these facilities, please visit the FCTEST and BESTEST pages.