Richard Engel
On November 12, SERC’s Hydrogen Energy in Engineering Education (H2E3) project achieved a major milestone with the delivery of a fuel cell test station and a dozen benchtop fuel cell/electrolyzer kits to University of California, Berkeley. Director Peter Lehman, faculty research associate Eileen Cashman, and H2E3 project manager Richard Engel made the trek to UCB to hand off the newly completed equipment, all built in-house at SERC.
While at UCB, Peter and Richard demonstrated the test station and presented a well-received lecture on fuel cells to nearly 200 undergrad and grad students in a course on energy and society taught by Dr. Dan Kammen of UCB’s Energy and Resources Group.
The test station includes an eight-cell, 500-Watt fuel cell stack, also designed and built by SERC. The test station will be used by upper division UCB engineering students to learn hands-on how fuel cells are tested by researchers and manufacturers. The benchtop kits will be used in introductory engineering and thermodynamics courses to explore how fuel cells and electrolyzers can be used to convert chemical energy to electricity and vice versa.
During Richard’s leave from SERC, Eileen will take over as interim project manager for H2E3. In spring semester 2010, the project will bring more fuel cell lectures and lab activities to a variety of classes at HSU and UCB, while outreach gets underway to identify other UC and CSU campuses that will participate in the project during its third year. The project also aims to place students in summer internships with fuel cell manufacturers who are partners on H2E3.
