DTU to collaborate on fuel cells with world’s largest natural gas importer

At the recent Global Green Growth Forum Summit in Copenhagen, President and CEO Seunghoon Lee of KOGAS and DTU President Anders Bjarklev signed a memorandum of understanding with the object of collaborating on research and development within fuel cells. KOGAS has great expertise in reforming technologies to convert natural gas into hydrogen which can be used in fuel cells to produce electricity and heat with high efficiency. To be used in the most common type of fuel cell, the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), the hydrogen has to undergo an expensive clean-up to remove impurities. However, other types of fuel cells can be much more impurity tolerant. This is in particular true of so-called high-temperature PEM fuel cells (HT-PEMFC) which makes HT-PEMFC highly relevant for use in combination with natural gas.

The Department of Energy Conversion and Storage (DTU Energy) is one of the world’s leading research institutions within HT-PEMFC fuel cells with key efforts on materials, cell components and cells. This makes the department an attractive partner for KOGAS. DTU Energy has for many years collaborated with the company Danish Power Systems on HT-PEMFC; at the Global Green Growth Forum Summit KOGAS also entered into an agreement with Danish Power Systems with the common aim to commercialize their technologies and in this way contribute to a sustainable development in Denmark, Korea and world-wide.

Professor Jens Oluf Jensen, who is coordinating the DTU Energy activities on HT-PEMFC, is looking forward to the collaboration: “Korea is very active in the development of fuel cell technologies. We see a good match between the KOGAS reformer technology and HT-PEMFC, and I welcome the opportunity to develop the technologies further based on our joint expertise.”