The project will be carried out at the development and manufacturing facility of Advent Technologies A/S (formerly Serenergy A/S), in Aalborg, Denmark. The facility includes pilot production of the SereneU 5kW fuel cell unit, the R&D –Tech. Dept. (RD-TE) and the high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (HT-PEM) fuel cell laboratory. The group covers all the aspects of fuel cell development and stack quality management, including focus areas regarding bipolar plate development and design, membrane electrode assembly development, and fuel cell stack assembly, failure analysis and quality management. Testing at several scales is carried out, from inks and powders to single cells and full-size industrial fuel cell stacks. Therefore, the R&D laboratory is equipped with high shear mixers and ultrasonic equipment, a rheometer, microscopes, an XRD system and two industrial slot-die coaters; besides stack-testing, common electrochemical techniques (EIS, CV) are performed in the HT-PEM laboratory.
The group has extensive experience with cell and stack operations, physical degradation mechanisms, and validating new materials and production methods on industrial-sized production equipment. The fuel cell R&D group consists of 7 employees (4 technical leads with backgrounds from physics and chemistry to fuel cell and electro-mechanical engineering, 1 fuel cell engineer, 1 lab technician, 1 materials engineer, and1 industrial PhD student). The R&D department has strong ties to academia in Denmark, for instance with the Department of Energy and Department of Materials and Productions at Aalborg University whose problem-based learning(PBL) approach provides students the opportunity to apply their knowledge on R&D projects at Advent Technologies A/S each academic semester.
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