Technical Competences of R&D providers

Hysy Lab (Hydrogen System Laboratory) is a centre of excellence on hydrogen technologies; co-financed by EU, it has been conceived as an aggregation centre of the Piedmont Hydrogen System and of the operators of the sector, as a support laboratory for small and medium sized enterprises, and as a training centre for future technicians working in the sector of the applied research. Hysy Lab is the Environment Park’s most advanced laboratory, for components and systems and R&D centre focused on 3 macro objectives: production, storage, application.

Services offered by Hysy Lab:

• Design and set up of systems and subsystems for hydrogen production, unconventional storage and fuel cell application
• Test on components and systems involved in the whole hydrogen chain. Comparison with state of the art technologies
• High performing membrane tests in various temperature, moisture and pressure conditions;
• Assembly and test of:
• direct methanol FC system for portable electronics
• co-generation system
• power system for yacht
• 1kW FC scooter: a fuel cell based scooter coupling the advantages of individual mobility (flexibility, efficiency, etc.) and hydrogen technologies (environmental impact, sustainability, etc.).
• educational hydrogen laboratories

The Laboratory has experience in research projects supported by different types of funding:

• European funding
  
  Hy TETRA Project (2006-2008): project constituted by 5 European Region partners leaders in Hydrogen technologies and supported by 6th FrameWork Programme; it is focused on hydrogen technological transfer activities.
  
  PEM TOOL Project (2005-2007): development of novel, efficient and validated software-based tools for PEM fuel cell component and stack designers. In this project, the laboratory role is to collect data for several different membranes and flow field geometries, which will be used to validate the numerical models developed by partners.
  
  Hy TRAN Project (2004-2008): Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies for Road Transport. The project is aimed at advancing fuel cell system, sub-system and components and at integrating the sub-system into two innovative fully integrated Fuel Cell Systems.
  
  
• National funding
  
  FISR Project - Innovative systems of hydrogen production from renewable energies (2005- 2008): the project is aimed at developing technologies, components and systems for hydrogen production from biomass characterised by reduced environmental impact.
  
  
• Regional funding
  
  HySy VISION Project (2006-2008): the project is aimed at reinforcing the Piedmont Hydrogen System through technology transfer from public and private research centres to local PMI and the realization of pilot projects. The activities which mostly involve Hysylab are:
  
  • characterisation of a hydrogen compressor to be used in fuel cell vehicles
  • metal hydride synthesis at industrial scale and development of a metal hydride reservoir
  • development and building of a large fuel cell stack test station
  
  
  FC AUTO Project (2006-2008): the project is aimed at finding solutions to specific requirements coming from regional hydrogen field of the automotive sector. >
  
  Micro CHP (2005-2008): the aim of the project is to develop a combined-heat-and-power generation unit (CHP) unit based on the combination of a natural gas steam reformer and a stack of polymer electrolyte fuel cells for multifamily houses and services sector. >
  
  CELCO YACHT 2005-2008): development of a fuel cell system and an integrated reforming system to be used as an auxiliary power supply in yachts. >
  
  MICROCELL (2005-2008): project aimed at developing a methanol FC system for laptop computers and mobile phone power supplies. >
  
  HYSY RIDER (2005-2008): production of a fleet of Light Fun Vehicles (LFV) powered by hydrogen PWS power systems with limited-power FC stacks (300 kW and 1 kW). >
  
  HYDROGEN SCHOOL (since 2004): the project consisted in the installation of 8 HySyOne (educational lab to learn and observe all the hydrogen chain) in Technical Secondary Schools (one for each Piedmont district). >