CGFCC in the News

Sept. 09, 2002, Mass High Tech 2000, Fuel Cell Science booms on Connecticut campus

The mechanical engineering department at the University of Connecticut is offering its first-ever course on fuel cell engineering this fall. The interest is overwhelming.

"It was crowded," said course instructor Frano Barbir. "The cap was 30, but there were more than 50 students in the room."

The introduction of a fuel cell engineering course is just the latest event in a push at UConn to establish the university as a fuel cell powerhouse.

Six months ago, the school opened its 16,000-square-foot Connecticut Global Fuel Cell Center.

The university has also endowed two $1 million chairs in fuel cell technology, which attracted new professors: Nigel Sammes, a New Zealand researcher who most recently worked at Cambridge-based fuel cell company Acumentrics, and Ken Reifsnider, formerly a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

"We're searching for four additional chaired faculty for chairs endowed at $1 million each," said Ted Bergman, head of the mechanical engineering department at UConn.

The new Fuel Cell Center already has a project, thanks to a $2 million grant from the U.S. Army. Fourteen faculty members and about 30 students are working to develop portable fuel cells for military applications.

Over the past four years, the university has raised a total of $14 million in private and public grants to support its fuel cell technology efforts.

"We have such a cluster of fuel cell companies in Connecticut," Bergman said. "To develop a technology, it's very useful to have an educational component that can be served by a local university. And we have a deep background in the subject. At least four faculty members have been working on fuel cell research as far back as the Apollo program."

Indeed, Connecticut has emerged as a hotbed of fuel cell development, with companies such as FuelCell Energy, UTC Fuel Cells and Proton Energy Systems calling the Nutmeg State home.

It's a cluster from which the university is already benefiting. UTC endowed one of the fuel cell chairs and Barbir, the fuel cell course's instructor, is chief scientist at Proton Energy.

"We spent a lot of time talking with fuel cell companies about this program," Bergman said.

Bergman said he knew that demand for a fuel cell engineering course was high. He could hear it in the hallways, he said. And it turns out that students weren't the only interested parties. A number of faculty members are also sitting in on the course, Bergman said.

"Potential engineering students are excited about alternative and clean energy, and about making a difference that way," Bergman said.

In the future, however, Bergman said UConn may offer a master's in fuel cell engineering. Jim Fenton, a professor at UConn, will teach a follow-up fuel cell course in the spring.

"I suspect the next course will have an electro-chemical orientation," Bergman said. "The current course is more systems-oriented."