{"id":227921,"date":"2025-04-23T14:27:30","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T18:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=227921"},"modified":"2025-04-23T14:27:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T18:27:30","slug":"coe-group-shares-fuel-cell-aviation-research-networks-at-doe-energy-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/04\/coe-group-shares-fuel-cell-aviation-research-networks-at-doe-energy-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"CoE Group Shares Fuel Cell Aviation Research, Networks at DOE Energy Summit"},"content":{"rendered":"

College of Engineering (CoE) graduate student Megan Cunningham \u201924 (CLAS, ENG) recently helped represent UConn at an energy summit, immersing herself in hundreds of innovative technologies in fields such as nuclear energy, biology, electronics, thermodynamics, and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe summit was more like the engineering nerd\u2019s version of Disney World,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was incredibly exciting to see how future new energy technologies are being invented by the brightest engineers in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cunningham is among five CoE researchers and several UConn alumni who attended the 2025 U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s ARPA-E Innovation Summit<\/a> in March. The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) holds the annual event to bring together top energy scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, engineers, and industry leaders who are interested in catalyzing the future of energy innovation.<\/p>\n

The summit exposed participants to more than 400 innovative projects, technologies, and prototypes. The UConn team showcased their own capabilities in developing high power, lightweight, multi-fueled solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), which are especially appealing for mobility, including the aviation industry. When used in \u201cstacks,\u201d these SOFCs can generate electricity directly from natural gas, propane, or jet fuels through an electrochemical process, rather than combustion.<\/p>\n

\"Maric<\/a>
On April 14, Professor Xiao-Dong Zhou spoke with UConn President and Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Radenka Maric about his group’s fuel cell research.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

UConn\u2019s high-efficiency chemical-to-electricity conversion technology has the potential to eliminate the range limitations of current battery-powered aviation and unlock a new era of long-range, high-performance electric propulsion.<\/p>\n

When directly fueled by natural gas, these fuel cells outperform industry benchmarks in power density, efficiency, thermal cycling durability, mechanical strength, and safety, surpassing both current hydrogen-fueled low-temperature fuel cells and state-of-the-art SOFCs.<\/p>\n

Xiao-Dong Zhou, the Nicholas E. Madonna Chair in Sustainability, Connecticut Clean Energy Fund Professor of Sustainable Energy, and director of UConn\u2019s Center for Clean Energy Engineering (C2E2) is principal investigator of the project. He secured funding for the work through a total $5M cooperative agreement from ARPA-E\u00a0under its Range Extenders for Electric Aviation with Low Carbon and High Efficiency<\/a> (REEACH) program in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the project began, we have filed over 10 invention disclosures and patent applications. These innovations lay the foundation for advancing UConn\u2019s metal-supported SOFC technology toward lightweight, high-performance systems suited for electric propulsion,\u201d says Zhou, who\u2019s also professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, materials science and engineering, and mechanical engineering.<\/p>\n

Zhou and Cunningham attended the ARPA-E Summit with group members David L. Daggett, a C2E2 professor of practice and retired Boeing technical fellow; Nengneng Xu, assistant research professor for C2E2; and Yudong Wang, assistant research professor of mechanical engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond learning about the latest academic advances, what stood out most was how closely these innovations are aligned with real-world commercial applications,\u201d explains Xu. \u201cIt was incredibly inspiring to see how research can contribute directly to solving urgent energy challenges\u2014and how it can help researchers realize their own value through meaningful, real-world impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the UConn team is specifically studying how SOFC stacks could power an airplane, their process is envisioned to first be used in applications outside of aviation for ground-based power generation.<\/p>\n

UConn team members spoke with scientists from the University of California, Berkeley about a collaboration with their high-performing, lightweight DC-DC converters. They engaged with aerospace and defense companies RTX and Boeing personnel regarding the use of biomimicry-inspired, additively-manufactured, high-temperature compact heat exchangers. A marine-based sustainability company showed interest in using UConn\u2019s SOFC-powered small-scale airplanes for data collection over the ocean. And Rolls-Royce engineers, who develop airplane and motor vehicle engines, were interested in collaborating on similar small-scale hybrid fuel cell-gas turbine engine systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe summit allowed for discussions with groups from across the United States that would have otherwise been very difficult to facilitate,\u201d Zhou says.<\/p>\n

Xu personally engaged with industry leaders from Nissan and Johnson Matthey. \u201cThese conversations sparked exciting discussions about future collaborations and significantly boosted our confidence in the commercial potential of our technology,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cConversations sparked exciting discussions about future collaborations and significantly boosted our confidence in the commercial potential of our technology.” \u2014 Nengneng Xu, assistant research professor for C2E2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Additionally, Cunningham spoke with UConn alumni, past collaborators, and current partners to gain insight about the direction of energy innovation from the perspective of those currently working in the industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an incredible opportunity both to learn about the overall energy industry as well as make connections with researchers and professionals from across the country,\u201d Cunningham says. \u201cNetworking with industries is absolutely critical, as it allows us to make connections with groups we otherwise would not be exposed to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Summit participants also attended panel discussions hosted by Department of Energy and ARPA-E leaders, industry experts, and university researchers. Discussions centered on the increasing need for electricity and using innovative nuclear fission and fusion, electrochemistry, AI datacenters, and natural resources to generate electricity.<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnology that wasn\u2019t feasible in the recent past is now within our reach,\u201d Cunningham says. \u201cThese areas will be key to allow the U.S. to take the lead in producing the next generation of energy systems in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read More: https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2023\/12\/research-team-develops-hybrid-propulsion-commercial-electric-aircraft\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A UConn team joined energy scientists, technologists, engineers, and industry leaders at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)\u00a0Innovation Summit to collaborate on the future of energy innovation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":227922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2514],"class_list":["post-227921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 06:31:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227921"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228418,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227921\/revisions\/228418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/227922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227921"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=227921"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=227921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}