Research and prototyping, two inseparable elements for the development of energy technologies based on hydrogen

Generating electric power using hydrogen is becoming a real hope; thanks to hydrogen technologies, climate challenges might be overcame and our towns would be free of pollutants and noise. For this reason, research and development of hydrogen technologies are fundamental to accelerate their introduction on the market as soon as possible. Starting from the electrochemical process, that allow electricity production, research activity has to be addressed to the design of fuel cell, which is the device "containing" the electrochemical package. In this field, namely in fuel cell stack research, the authors have developed a reliable methodology for stack design and test, over 15 years of experience. Prototyping is the direct expression of the research activity, carried out on the device, which allow the lab scale technology to be transferred on the real use. Due to that, research on fuel cells started studying the design methodology, has passed through the manufacture of the devices, until to experimental tests. In this way the issues related to the fuel cell stack "structure" can be highlighted and both the design methodology and, consequently, the manufacturing, improved. In this work, the authors illustrates how prototyping activity on fuel cell stack permitted the manufacturing of several prototypes, conceived for different applications (stationary, space, cogeneration in combination with reformer). Moreover, the improving in power and reliability of the devices and the problems encountered during research activities will be discussed.