INC Innovation Updates – March 2021

How can hydrogen change the future of the energy supply? What has to happen from a technical and economic point of view for fuel cell technology to become more widespread?

While the technical fundamentals of fuel cell and electrolyzer technology have been known for a long time, the industrial and scalable production of the stack components and the adaptation of accompanying periphery (the so-called „balance of plant“) at economically justifiable conditions are yet a large hurdle. Along the whole hydrogen value chain, from production to storage and transportation until the final utilization, there are currently many unsolved questions when it comes to area-wide usage.

During the last two years, in close collaboration with the Center Fuel Cell Industrialization at the RWTH Aachen Campus, we have gone the first steps on the path to a future, hydrogen-based energy supply. Together with our research and industrial partners, we have gained deep insights into the technological state-of-the-art applications and identified processes to implement the industrial production of the necessary components. While we recently focussed on technological challenges like industrial production processes for forming and coating of bipolar plates, dedicated hydrogen tank materials, etc, we now have widened our focus on the whole hydrogen value chain.

Together with industrial partners from eleven companies in the consortium project „Scaling Up the Hydrogen Economy“ we are trying to overcome the existing hurdles. We are developing joint processes and strategies to further advance the diffusion of hydrogen-based technologies in both mobile and stationary applications.

Are you also interested in the field of tomorrow´s energy supply? Or did you already develop your own ideas and now are looking for suitable partners for implementation? Don´t hesitate to contact us!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a well-known term in today´s industries – many ideas and possible applications have been identified inside companies to increase efficiency and productivity. Nevertheless, numerous implementation attempts fail due to the complexity of the selected applications or confusion about the issues that shall be solved.
Does this somehow sound familiar, as you also had to go through similar experiences?

Before implementing any AI solution, the identification of suitable use cases and the verification of feasibility within the existing framework and infrastructure is a mandatory and crucial step. It is absolutely necessary to have a clear idea of the internal or external customers´ problem that shall be solved, to avoid focusing on structures and processes that are (yet) too complex or simply not ready to implement an AI-based solution for. Our »AI Navigator«, enables companies to find their optimized way to introduce AI technologies successfully and profitably. The toolset, which consists of the four stages Ideation, Assessment, Data Testing and Implementation, can be easily applied by companies of any size. It simplifies the introduction of AI solutions by giving a pre-structure for customers who have not had any contact with AI so far or who want to open their minds to completely new application areas. The AI Navigator is integrated into a comprehensive training and advisory program by INC Invention Center.