Amazingly, our group is growing and so is our determination to bring the open fuel cell to the world. We are thus very happy that it did not need an awful lot of advertisement for people to express their interest if the OFC.
Quite shortly after the German chancellor has visited the ZBT, on March 16 another head of state stopped by. Lotay Tshering, the prime minister of Bhutan visited Germany and came to the ZBT eager to learn about their research activities in hydrogen technologies. In the small Himalayan country of Bhutan, three times more CO2 is bound than emitted thanks to a high degree of forestation and renewable energy technology. Being a supporter of free education Lotay Tshering showed great excitement for the Open Fuel Cell project and we couldn’t have been more proud. 😍
Just one week later, the ZBT hosted the 19th Symposium on Fuel Cell and Battery Modeling and Experimental Validation, or ModVal 2023 for short. These were three exciting days full of science and research from academic and industry speakers, theorists and experimentalists. As a satellite event to the conference, group tours were organized to the ZBT premises. There Burghard and Alexandra showed the open fuel cell to visitors alongside a short handout about the project. Well, soon enough all of those printouts were gone and the OFC project gained plenty of more fans.
Shortly after that, Burghard was contacted by Nilüfer Baba, professor at the department of electrical engineering at the Hochschule Mannheim. Her group is interested in the OFC to run a Bachelor thesis research project on it. Of course we are happy to help and send an assembly kit for the OFC to Mannheim and hope that they will share their experience with us.
On April 15, Burghard joined the 5th FUNK.TAG in Kassel where he was confronted with a lot of interest in the OFC. We developed the idea to write an article about the project for the AATiS Praxishefte, Burghard met the people behind the school laboratory Future Space and talked to teachers which seemed to be very interested in the OFC – we are excited to see what follows up from this network.
In late April Burghard was contacted by Hahn-Schickard who was the project partner in the original SAFEREF project during which Burghard and Alexandra developed their first 3D-printed fuel cell which became the blueprint of the OFC. They asked if they could exhibit the OFC at the SENSOR+TEST Fair in Nürnberg. Burghard did not hesitate and immediately started the 3D printers for more OFCs. 😊
