PARTNERS :

EPFL – Research coordinator

EPFL is one of Europe’s leading Research and Education Institutions (ranked number 12 in the QS World University Ranking of 2017-2018), with about 5000 staff (4000 academic), almost 5000 postgraduates, and more than 10000 BSc/MSc students (data for 2016). The Group of Energy Materials (GEM), led by MER Dr Jan Van herle, as a part of the Mechanical Engineering Institute (IGM) in the Faculty of Engineering Sciences (STI) at EPFL, has more than 25-year experiences on SOC R&D. Its strength is the strong coupling between multi-scale modelling, for both component and system designs, and experimental work on cell and stack. This coupling has allowed the optimisation for several planar stack designs and detailed modelling of degradation issues, which contribute significantly for the improvement of the SOC technology. GEM is firmly interconnected with other research groups at EPFL, e.g., the group of Industrial Process and Energy Systems Engineering for employing advanced computer-aided methodology and tools to address key design and optimization issues of solid-oxide cell related processes and plants, Materials Institute and Chemistry Institute for detailed post-test analysis at the Electron Microscopy Centre. Together with a sister Lab in the Mechanical Engineering Institute (LA – Automation), model predictive control and real time optimisation (RTO) on fuel cell stacks and systems is being developed since several years.