In this webinar, Dr. Quentin Meyer from The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia talks to AZoCleantech about the current state of the hydrogen fuel cells research, the most promising markets, how advanced modeling should be guiding research, and where fuel cell research should focus going forward.
Watch here or read more about this event below.
How to make hydrogen fuel cells cheaper and more efficient - Dr Quentin Meyer (UNSW) speaks to AZoCleantech
Abstract
Low-cost, high-performance, and durable hydrogen fuel cells are crucial for the success of the global hydrogen economy and Australia’s hydrogen roadmap. However, their large-scale commercialisation is hindered by their high costs and less than satisfactory efficiency. Hydrogen fuel cells currently rely on costly platinum to generate electricity, with a lot of active research on much cheaper materials such as iron, manganese, and cobalt.
While iron-nitrogen-carbon catalysts are very promising replacements for platinum, its hydrogen fuel cells' durability (<300 hours) is much lower than platinum (10 to 40,000 hours), suggesting rather complex device-level challenges. Dr Meyer's work will provide an overview of these challenges, focusing on how to capture them in real devices, with key findings published in Energy & Environmental Science in July 2023.
Finally, Dr Meyer will introduce the world’s largest super-resolved digital twin of a hydrogen fuel cell structure generated on the world's most powerful supercomputer. This model allows the visualisation of large-scale (> 16 mm2) water transport using Lattice-Boltzmann simulations. These ground-breaking findings were published in Nature Communications in February 2023. This model will be crucial to further optimise the gas diffusion electrode and flow field structure and to improve hydrogen fuel cells' performances.
About the event speaker:
Dr Quentin Meyer obtained his PhD in 2015 in Chemical Engineering, receiving the Award for Research Excellence (University College London).
He then relocated to Australia in 2017. After consulting on batteries and fuel cells for a year, he joined Prof Zhao’s group as a senior researcher and laboratory manager at the University of New South Wales, where he led the exciting hydrogen fuel cells cluster.
His current research focuses on the activity and durability of low-cost catalysts in hydrogen fuel cells and electrolyzers. As of November 2023, he has published 61 journal articles, filed 2 patents, and given over 60 presentations at conferences and invited seminars globally.