Hydrogen fuel cells can provide zero-emissions power for the automotive industry, marine, aviation and remote and back-up power (e.g. for mining and telecommunications industries). It is projected that the global hydrogen fuel cell market will increase by more than 6 times from 2022 to 2032 and is expected to reach USD$95.5 billion by 2032 . Therefore, there has been significant recent government and private investment in developing fuel cell manufacturing capability around the world. However, despite the obvious applications for fuel cells in Australia, there is no fuel cell manufacturing capability in Australia. This represents a significant opportunity for Australia and, in particular, Victoria which has a strong history of advanced manufacturing. The ability to locally manufacture fuel cells will reduce Australia’s dependence on imported fuel cells and ensure Australia has control over the sovereign risk associated with the hydrogen ecosystem supply chains.
Our first FEnEx CRC project has aimed to provide a key step towards establishing a fuel cell industry in Australia, by examining the feasibility of an open source fuel cell stack concept. For this we used world-leading test capability available in Germany at Technical University Chemnitz (TUC) and “HZwo”, a German innovation cluster for fuel cell and hydrogen technology. The project is almost complete and has been very successful. The open source fuel cell has been successfully demonstrated for an example Australian technology. As a result, a framework for how this open source fuel cell stack can be accessed by Australian companies has been defined, and several organisations that can benefit from this capability have been identified. The final task is to develop a plan focused on “onshoring” this fuel cell test capability in Australia.
This project aims to implement the first stages of this plan, defined in the first project. This primarily involves bringing the open source fuel cell stack capability to Victoria by commissioning it at the Hycel Technology Hub at Deakin University. Subsequently, we will work with Australian industry to demonstrate the effectiveness of the open source stack as a method to rapidly assess and demonstrate new fuel cell technology.
Partners: The University of Western Australia, Victoria Government – Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action
Researchers: Prof. Eric F. May
Duration: 15 months