News & Events - Switch

SolydEra brings SWITCH to the Hannover Fair!

Maggio 26, 2023

SolydEra SA is Partner to the SWITCH project and is responsible for the design and construction of Balance of Plant components operating at high temperature. The company develops the Large Stack Module design for reversible operation, continuous hydrogen production, and is involved in the overall system design, construction and testing.

Zacharie Wuillemin presented the SWITCH Technology at the SolydEra booth at the HANNOVER MESSE, in April 2023, replying to the numerous questions of the interested public!

Check the following link for the agenda of the fair: https://www.hannovermesse.de/en/

Sixth project meeting

Marzo 31, 2023

This last wee of March ends with the 6th project meeting of SWITCH, which took place online but saw the proactive involvement of all Partners.

The WP Leaders presented their activities: a good number of tasks are coming to an end such as the LCA and techno-economic analysis and the design and selection of BoP components.

It is now time to assembly the demonstrator and test it, This will be the main activity from now on, together with the dissemination and exploitation of the results.

The Partners will meet again next summer, but this time they will meet in person once the demonstrator will be completed.

Stay tuned… the best is yet to come!

SWITCH and the annual date with the EFCF

Dicembre 13, 2022

The European SOFC & SOE Forum is a high-level international fuel cell & electrolyser event that every year offers a presentation of the state-of-the-art technology.

In 2022, Switzerland hosted the 15^th edition of EFCF and focused on “science, engineering, materials, systems, applications and markets for all types of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC), Solid Oxide Electrolysers (SOE) and Solid Oxide Electrochemical Reactors” also addressing the established issue of CO2 emission reduction and reuse.

More information about the conference here: https://www.efcf.com/2022. The agenda can be read and downloaded here.

SWITCH project participated in the conference on several occasion. This year, three presentations have been given by three partners: Solydera, EFPL and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR).

Solydera focused on the large stack module and system development for SOFC, SOE and reversible operation in industrial processes.

DLR presented the transient simulation and experimental validation of a solid oxide cell module in electrolysis and polygeneration mode.

EPFL reported the results of local investigation of a segmented reversible-SOC.

Furthermore, SWITCH participated with a workshop in the final event of CH2P project, as already written in a this news.

2022 was not the first year that saw the participation of SWITCH project in EFCF. Represented by SolidPower, the project took part also in the virtual event European Fuel Cell Forum 2020, where the development and testing of a 25 kWe Large Stack Module for SOFC and SOE applications was presented.

New scientific paper published in the EDP Science Journal

Dicembre 2, 2022

SWITCH’s researchers Michele Bolognese, Matteo Testi, Lorenzo De Bortoli, Ruben Bartali and Luigi Crema of the Centre for Sustainable Energy of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Italy) published the article “Experimental validation of a dynamic modelling of a Reversible Solid Oxide Cells (rSOCs)”.
The work is the result of the participation of the researcher in the EFC21 – European Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Piero Lunghi Conference.

Abstract:
The integration of Hydrogen technologies in different end-uses such as transport, electric microgrids, residential and industrial applications, will increase exponentially soon. Hydrogen as energy carrier allows more favourable energy conversion than other conventional systems and is crucial in worldwide decarbonize end uses. The production of green hydrogen, using RES, is a key area for the evolution of this technology. In this context, SWITCH is a Horizon 2020 European Project that aims to design, build and test an in-situ fully integrated and continuous multisource hydrogen production system, based on solid oxide cell technology. Reversible Solid Oxide Cell (rSOCs) technologies allow to convert renewable energy as hydrogen in the power-to-gas application (P2G) and in reversible mode is able to produce electricity from hydrogen stored, power-to-power application (P2P). rSOCs are really interesting to stabilize the random nature of RES because a combined electrolysis and fuel cell system should be able to switch between the two modes as quickly as possible in order to optimize the integration and the use of RES. However, rSOCs need a complex BoP from the thermal point of view, able to guarantee high efficiency even at partial load mode as well as easy start-up and shutdown procedures. In this work, a Stack Box Module dynamic model was developed in Modelica environment as a dynamic tool for the definition and optimization of BoP requirements. Stack model was validated in SOFC (Solid Oxide Fuel Cell) and SOE (Solid Oxide Electrolyser). The results of the simulation provide verification of the technical/thermodynamic behaviour and flexibility of a stack box of 70 cells. Dynamic modelling allows to evaluate the effect of the reagent inlet temperatures on the operation and hydrogen production/consumption in terms of yield as well as the transients between the different operative modes. Model has been validated by experimental measurements performed in the laboratory. In particular, the kinetics of the reactions governing steam methane reforming (SMR) was considered from data found in the literature, while the ASR (Area Specific Resistance) value was calibrated according to experimental data. The results of the dynamic model show as model can be a useful design and optimization tool for the SOCs technology.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202233401003

The article is available in Open access at this link: https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/abs/2022/01/e3sconf_efc2022_01003/e3sconf_efc2022_01003.html

SWITCH presented at Modelon Innovate 2022

Novembre 24, 2022

The researcher Michele Bolognese, from Fondazione Bruno Kessler – FBK, participated in the Conference Modelon Innovate 2022 in Stockholm, last 19th of October.

With the presentation “rSOC System: Modeling and Control Development With Modelica-Based Language“, the researcher wished to present the model developed for the H2020 Projects PROMETEO and SWITCH.

The model enables the evaluation of a detailed system analysis and operation, which can also be used as a design tool for the upscale of the rSOCs technology in different scenarios and applications, and to test and optimize the control strategy.

Modelon Innovate 2022 is a global event focused on system simulation for innovation and product design within commercial industries.

If you are interested in the presentation, you can find it in the publications section!

SWITCH at the European Hydrogen Week!

Novembre 17, 2022

The European Hydrogen Week is the biggest annual event dedicated to hydrogen with a series of great events all around hydrogen.

The third edition of the event took place in Brussels, from 24 to 28 October 2022, included an agenda rich of events, activities and panels.

Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) attended the event and was present at the Exhibition, an important occasion to give visibility and showcase SWITCH project results!

SWITCH – CH2P Joint Workshop

Novembre 11, 2022

On July 7, 2022 the SWITCH project presented the future exploitation during the final event of the CH2P Project.

The CH2P project designed, constructed and tested a novel 20 kg/day SOFC prototype for flexible and multimodal co-generation of hydrogen, heat and power using bio-methane.

The SWITCH project exploits and upscales the CH2P prototype by adding SOE operations for green hydrogen production. The SWITCH prototype will operate in five SOE/SOFC modes and it will produce 100 kg/day in SOE mode.

The workshop ended with a debate on the lesson learned from the two projects and the next steps for technology upscaling and application at Hydrogen Refueling Stations.

The event was hosted by the 15th European SOFC and SOE Forum (EFCF 2022), with the possibility to join both on-site and remote. The event was attended by 54 participants: 38 people connected from remote and 16 attended in presence at KKL in Lucerne.

EPFL at ECOS 2022

Luglio 28, 2022

Xinyi Wei, researcher at the EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), partner of the SWITCH project, gave the presentation entitled “Life cycle Assessment of different hydrogen production routes” at ECOS 2022, the 35th International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems.

The presentation aimed to give an overview of the LCA made and results achieved on different hydrogen production routes, and one of them has been assessed within the SWITCH project.

ECOS is the name of a series of international conferences that focus on modern aspects of Thermal Sciences with particular emphasis on Thermodynamics and its applications in energy conversion systems and processes. ECOS22 has been held in Copenhagen, Denmark from 3 to 7 July 2022.

Read more about ECOS here: https://ecos2022.dtu.dk/

EPFL in Corfu to participate in the 5th International Degradation Workshop!

Maggio 11, 2022

SWITCH project participated in the 5th International Workshop on degradation issues of fuel cells and electrolysers, which took place on 3rd and 4th of May 2022, in Corfu (Greece).

Hamza Moussaoui from EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) gave the presentation entitled “Segmented SOFC/SOE testing with depletion of fuel / air / steam”.

The event is co-organized by the University of Birmingham (UoB), the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences (FORTH/ICEHT).

The aim of the conference is to study the phenomena / mechanisms of degradation of fuel cells and electrolysis both at the level of unit cells and in the array. The topics of the conference cover the widest range of study, ranging from fundamental research issues to the operation of commercial units in power generation / conversion applications.

EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF LSM DYNAMIC MODELLING PRESENTED AT EFC21

Dicembre 16, 2021

Our researcher Michele Bolognese presented today at European Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Conference (EFC21) the results of the experimental validation of the SWITCH Large Stack Module. The results of the dynamic modelling of the Reversible Stack Module and of the External Reformer were validated by the experimental activities performed in Fondazione Bruno Kessler – FBK with 3% of discrepancy. The results confirm the robustness of the model, that can be used for future modelling of hydrogen stationary applications

More details will be shared in the conference proceedings.

For more information, visit http://www.europeanfuelcell.it