Three scientists from DTU Energy and the CEO of the fuel cell company Danish Power Systems have edited a comprehensive book dedicated to High Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells.
Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) are the preferred fuel cells for a variety of applications such as fuel cell cars, backup power and portable electronics. Now three scientists from DTU Energy at the Technical University of Denmark, postdoc David Aili and the two professors Qingfeng Li and Jens Oluf Jensen, together with the CEO of the fuel cell company Danish Power Systems, Hans Aage Hjuler, have edited a comprehensive book dedicated to High Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (HT-PEMFC). Here they review and update decades of combined knowledge from the fuel cell community, universities and industry alike about the materials and technology.
“High Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells - Approaches, Status, and Perspectives” was recently published both online (http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319170817) and hardcopies by Springer. The book describes the very active field of HT-PEMFC and its development since the concept was introduced in the early 1990s.
Hundreds of patents have since been filed and thousands of research papers have been published on the subject, and both research and development activities are flourishing at research institutions as well as in industrial companies, though a real commercial breakthrough is yet to be seen.
"We hope others will be just as inspired by our review as we were making it"
Jens Oluf Jensen, head of section in Proton conductors, DTU Energy
A total of 67 scientists from all over the world has contributed to the book and many more researchers and research groups are not directly represented as authors but well referred to in the chapters. The result is a book meant to be used as a reference for the fuel cell communities in universities and companies as well as for students around the world, covering the history, perspectives and the foreseeable future of HT-PEM.
It took roughly a year to piece all the information together and during the process the editors from DTU Energy got inspired to new ideas on the acid-base nature of proton conducting mechanisms and how better to define and improve the durability.
“It is always nice when somebody make the effort to review an entire field, as reviews can be very useful, and we got inspired to new ideas and new definitions in the process. We hope others will be just as inspired by our review as we were making it”, says Jens Oluf Jensen, head of section in Proton conductors, DTU Energy.