Richard EngelSERC has a long-standing working relationship with the mechanical engineering department at Kettering University in Flint, MI. As reported in the debut issue of this newsletter in 2006, we provided Kettering with a four-station fuel cell test stand and two fuel cell stacks. We even lost one of our finest fuel cell engineers, Antonio Reis, to Kettering’s engineering faculty, who recruited him to help run their fuel cell R&D program.
Kettering has continued to use that test stand and the SERC fuel cells over the past six years, periodically consulting with us on maintenance and upgrades to the equipment. This fall, we rebuilt their four-cell, 140 cm2 stack with new materials, enabling Kettering to keep on educating their students about fuel cell technology. More recently, Kettering has asked SERC to rebuild another of their aging stacks.
Kettering faculty expressed their pleasure to continue using SERC technology. “The SERC test equipment has been successfully used without any down time for teaching and research, year round, ever since it was first commissioned,” said Dr. Etim Ubong, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Kettering. “Notably, the equipment was used at our Center for the U.S. Fuel Cell Council’s round-robin test and validation of low temperature PEM single cells. We really value our great relationship with SERC.”
