Researchers at the Schulich School of Engineering have made what they’re calling a significant breakthrough toward creating higher-performance and lower-cost fuel cells to convert hydrogen into electricity.
As concern about climate change increases, interest in using hydrogen to produce clean electricity has exploded in recent years. Fuel cells are a critical enabler for large-scale adoption of hydrogen in transportation, materials handling (such as forklifts), backup power and more. And Schulich is at the forefront of developing the next generation of fuel cells.
“We get higher performance using less catalyst,” says Dr. Kunal Karan, MSc’94, PhD’99, a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, and associate director of the Calgary Advanced Energy Storage and Conversion Research – Technologies Group.