Two awards for doctoral students at IET-4

Ms. Sharon Pape and Ms. Sarah Zerressen won prizes for their lecture and poster presentation respectively at the "Aachen Hydrogen Colloquium - AHC 2024" conference of the "Zukunftscluster Wasserstoff".

Sharon Pape gave a presentation entitled “Hydrogen Generation through Alkaline Water Electrolysis: Investigating Long-Term Operation Characteristics” and received the Presentation Award. She has been a PhD student at the Institute of Energy Technologies - Electrochemical Engineering (IET-4) since August 2021. The focus of her research in the field of alkaline water electrolysis is on the investigation of the run-in behavior and aging of alkaline water electrolyzers (AWE) under stationary and dynamic operating conditions. The aim is to understand the influence of operating voltage and operating mode on efficiency and ageing and to develop standardized evaluation criteria for AWE systems.

Sarah Zerressen presented a poster entitled “Performance and characterization of stainless steel based porous transport layers for polymer electrolyte water electrolysis” and received the Poster Award. She has been a PhD student at the Institute of Energy Technologies - Electrochemical Process Engineering (IET-4) since January 2022. The focus of her research in the field of polymer electrolyte water electrolysis (PEMWE) deals with two core research questions: Can precious metal coatings on the porous transport layer (PTL) on the anode side be replaced by cheaper coatings and can the use of titanium as a material for the PTL be reduced by partially replacing it with cheaper stainless steel? (material research on corrosion protection), whereby the poster dealt with the second part of the research question, the use of stainless steel as a base material for anode PTLs in PEMWE.

The two winners were chosen by the conference participants. Each participant was able to rate the presentations and posters shown with 1-5 stars using an app.