The Center for Clean Hydrogen has opened at the University of Delaware as part of a public-private partnership to solve the challenges of creating low-cost clean hydrogen and efficient hydrogen conversion.

The center is a collaboration between the University of Delaware, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Department of Defense, Chemours, and Plug, which formed the Clean Hydrogen Partnership.

“Clean hydrogen has a critical role to play in strengthening our country’s industrial sector and moving us closer to net-zero emissions by 2050,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), who helped steer funding for the center.

The Clean Hydrogen Partnership is designed to drive research focused on lowering the cost and acceleration of green hydrogen and fuel cells by enabling the discovery of innovative materials, stack designs, and manufacturing improvements.

The research results will be tested in the Center for Clean Hydrogen, a research facility intended to enable real-world testing of new components at scale.

The center’s ability to test at scale will accelerate the adoption of new materials that are critical to meet the Energy Department’s Hydrogen Shot, which seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per one kilogram in one decade.

Check out a recent episode of the Factor This! podcast that examined the future of green hydrogen, featuring experts from Generate Capital, EDP Renewables, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts.

Students and post-doctoral employees from the University of Delaware will have the opportunity to do stack assembly at scale, thereby helping to build the next-generation clean energy workforce.

The students will gain experience with stack and component assembly, as well as electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineering skills that are required to operate the equipment safely. This experience and research are anticipated to lead to process improvements around the manufacturing of fuel cell and electrolyzer stacks.