Learn about Fuel Cell Technologies Office webinars held in 2019 through the descriptions and linked materials below. Also view webinar archives from other years.

Webinars presented in 2019:

On the Pathway to Lower-Cost Compressed Hydrogen Storage Tanks—Novel Precursors to Reduce the Cost of High-Strength Carbon Fiber

December 17, 2019

This webinar covered approaches from the University of Kentucky, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Penn State University to develop novel precursors with potential to significantly reduce the cost of high-strength carbon fiber compared to incumbent technologies. It also included an overview of a cost analysis of high-pressure hydrogen storage systems by Strategic Analysis. The high cost of hydrogen storage vessels is a key challenge for hydrogen fuel cell-powered applications in transportation. The advances coming from the projects featured in this webinar will help address this challenge and pave the way for affordable hydrogen storage systems in transportation.

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Fuel Cell Mobile Emergency Response Vehicle

September 5, 2019

This webinar, co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's Fuel Cell Technologies Office and Vehicle Technologies Office and interagency partners at the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, provided an overview of the potential benefits and challenges of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies used for emergency relief purposes. Operational requirements, vehicle specifications, and technology barriers for a concept fuel cell emergency relief vehicle were discussed. The webinar also described potential research and development needs in areas such as systems integration and manufacturing to reduce costs.

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Enabling Durable High-Power Membrane Electrode Assembly with Low Platinum Loading

August 28, 2019

In this webinar, General Motors researcher Swami Kumaraguru presented results from an FCTO-funded project that covers a systematic approach to low platinum state-of–the-art membrane electrode assembly (MEA) with the potential to meet DOE's 2020 performance targets. The project focuses on studying the impact of operating conditions and stress factors on both electrode and membrane degradation. Insights from this study provide a valuable toolkit that can be used by fuel cell system engineers to define the system and operating strategy to improve and increase MEA durability. In addition, this webinar presented ways in which the project team is collaborating with various DOE labs through the Fuel Cell Consortium for Performance and Durability.

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Advanced Electrocatalysts through Crystallographic Enhancement

July 31, 2019

During this webinar, Jacob Spendelow of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) described recent progress at LANL on development, characterization, and fuel cell testing of a promising new class of fuel cell electrocatalysts. State-of-the-art fuel cell catalysts include platinum alloys with a base metal such as cobalt. But cobalt dissolves during fuel cell operation, resulting in poor durability. Recently, LANL demonstrated that new electrocatalysts that include platinum-cobalt intermetallics have substantially lower rates of cobalt leaching compared with other alloys.

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Center for Hydrogen Safety: A Global Resource for the Safe Use and Handling of Hydrogen

June 19, 2019

During this webinar, Nick Barilo of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory provided an overview of the Center for Hydrogen Safety and how it will help the global hydrogen energy transition and enable sharing hydrogen safety information and best practices across multiple industries, including the transportation, industrial gas, energy, and manufacturing industries.

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Fuel Cell Performance and Durability through FC-PAD: A Multi-Lab Collaboration

March 28, 2019

This webinar provided an overview of the Fuel Cell Consortium for Performance and Durability (FC-PAD), a five-lab consortium that aims to accelerate improvements in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) performance and durability. Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory discussed the consortium's extensive materials research capabilities and how they are used to address R&D challenges in performance, durability, and cost. As part of this presentation, the labs highlighted the unique capabilities developed through the analysis of state-of-the-art PEMFC technologies in a commercial vehicle.

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Addressing Challenges to Water Splitting Materials for Hydrogen Production through HydroGEN AWSM, a Multi-Lab Collaboration

February 7, 2019

This webinar provided an overview of HydroGEN, part of DOE's Energy Materials Network. Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory discussed the consortium's extensive materials research capabilities to address R&D challenges in efficiency, durability, and cost. Researchers discussed the consortium's structure, which is designed to foster industry and academia collaboration and engagement, and to make HydroGEN capabilities available to the broader research community through DOE- and industry-funded projects.

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HyMARC: Addressing Key Challenges To Hydrogen Storage In Advanced Materials Through A Multi-Lab Collaboration

January 9, 2019

In this webinar, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories discussed the work within the Hydrogen Materials–Advanced Research Consortium (HyMARC) national laboratory team, presented key accomplishments to date, provided a description of unique capabilities available for collaborators to access, and described how individual projects can collaborate with the core team.

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