Michael H. Santare, professor of mechanical engineering, and Anette M. Karlsson, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, are leading efforts at the University.

The funding will support UD research on polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), which Santare said have many potential benefits for transportation applications. Among those benefits are increased fuel efficiency, lowered harmful emissions and a reduction of the world's dependence on petroleum, he said.

However, Santare said there are still a number of technical barriers that must be overcome before PEMFCs can be commercially successful on a large scale. One of the most challenging issues for PEMFC-powered vehicles is start-up and shut down in cold temperatures.

Because water transport through the membrane is an essential part of the operation of the fuel cell, sub-freezing temperatures can impose large stresses on the system as the water freezes, Santare said. These stresses in turn can cause premature mechanical failure of the fuel cell.

Furthermore, if water remains in the system after shut down, it could freeze and further stress the system.

“The need for improved lifetime of PEMFC necessitates that the freeze-thaw behavior be understood clearly and that mechanical models be developed so that new materials and system designs can be introduced to improve the cold temperature performance,” Santare said.

“In automobile applications, the requirement on durability is very high,” Karlsson said. “We don't expect to have to take the car in for service once a month. In fact, we don't expect to have to do anything to maintain the car. To ensure a reliable design of a fuel cell, we must therefore understand how it behaves over a long time, for all possible conditions. The fuel cell gets frozen several times during the winter and might run very hot during operation in the summer. Each extreme event accumulates a small damage and we must interpret this damage into our models to predict how the material degrades with time.”

She said the grant “is an important addition to the ongoing and growing effort in the mechanical engineering department on clean energy, where more than half a dozen faculty members are actively conducting research.“

In addition to Nuvera and UD, other partners in the project are W.L. Gore & Associates and SGL Carbon Inc.

Santare has research interests in applied mechanics and composite materials. He received a bachelor's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master's and doctorate from Northwestern University. He joined the UD faculty in 1986 and was a Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Universidade do Porto in Portugal in 2001.

Karlsson has interests in the thermo-mechanical properties and response of advanced and traditional materials. She received a doctorate in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Rutgers University and conducted postdoctoral research at Princeton University before joining the UD faculty in 2002. She is the recipient of the 2004 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award and the 2005 Francis Alison Young Scholars Award.

Another UD team, which is led by Jingguang Chen, professor of chemical engineering and director of UD's Center for Catalytic Science and Technology, and Brian Willis, assistant professor of chemical engineering, are part of a team that received a $4.6 million Department of Energy grant to work on a different aspect of fuel cell technology.

That team, which includes Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and fuel cell manufacturer Ballard Power Systems, is working to find ways in which hydrogen fuel cells can be made less costly and more stable by using materials such as tungsten carbide modified with low concentrations of platinum instead of pure platinum.

Both grants were awarded through the same Department of Energy program.

“The Department of Energy is committed to breaking our addiction to oil by creating a diverse portfolio of clean, affordable and domestically produced energy choices,” U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said in announcing the award, part of $100 million in grants announced by the agency. “We expect hydrogen to play an integral role in our energy portfolio, and we are eager to see hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road in the near future.”