The Zentrum für Sonnenenergie- und Wasserstoff- Forschung Baden-Württemberg / Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research (ZSW) was founded in 1988 as a non-profit foundation of the state of Baden- Württemberg. Today, with a turnover of around 50 million euros and around 350 employees and 100 students at its locations in Stuttgart and Ulm (Germany) it is a leading institute for applied research in the field of energy technologies.
ZSW´s major issues relate to the energy transition which include photovoltaics, wind energy, battery technology, fuel cells, electrolysis, e-fuels, circular economy, policy advice, and the use of AI for process and system optimisation. We work in tandem with industry to pave the way to market for new technologies.
The research department fuel cell stacks (ECB) is specialised in the development of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) technology with the focus on the construction, characterisation and simulation of fuel cells stacks and components and the construction of prototypes, as well as the development of production and test technologies.
The scientists at ZSW perform both: design engineering and electrochemical modelling of fuel cell components, stacks and systems with commercial and in-house simulation methods. Crucial verifications of simulation results are carried out by means of experiments under realistic conditions using hardware that provides important information. The investigations available range from microscopic processes such as water distribution in gas diffusion systems (including MPL) and catalyst layers (Monte Carlo modelling (MC)) and macroscopic processes (CFD and FEM simulations) through to the design of complete systems (IPSE-Pro, Matlab-Simulink).
- Professional workstations (8-24 Cores Intel Xeon, up to 128 GB main memory) and rack-based computer-cluster (> 400 cores, total over 3.7 TB main memory)
- ANSYS® FLUENT, including "User Defined Functions" and "Fuel Cell Modules"
- AVL FIRE™
- OpenFOAM
- Solid Edge Simulation
- MATLAB Simulink
- IPSEpro
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) enables us to rapidly optimise component structures and operating conditions. This also includes the development and establishment of completely new approaches using advanced simulation software that is verified by using conclusive hardware and experiments under realistic conditions.