NSF Award
2412463
With this AccelNet Design Track award, PIs and their US and international partners will form a global clean hydrogen Network of Networks (NoN): Research and Education Accelerated by Connections in Clean Hydrogen (REACH2). The network will be composed of researchers from academia, national labs and industry, across the globe. Clean hydrogen is entering a pivotal moment of ever-growing interest, with its potential to decarbonize the fields of energy generation, transportation, manufacturing and a number of chemical and industrial processes. However, close to 95% of the current global hydrogen supply is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming processes that emit large amounts of CO2. The grand challenge is to enable a paramount shift and scale-up in clean hydrogen production, mainly by water electrolysis, and its use (in fuel cells to produce clean energy and other applications). Our network will enable a coordinated and collaborative global effort with the goal to collaboratively address unmet fundamental research gaps and accelerate science in clean hydrogen technologies, water elecrolyzers and fuel cells, as well as to facilitate networking, education and training of next generation diverse talent and qualified workforce, benefiting society as a whole. <br/><br/>REACH2 Network will advance the following scientific areas by facilitating coordinated and synergetic collaboration, by providing tools and models for knowledge, data, samples, and facilities sharing, and by utilizing expertize of each network member: (1) We will collaboratively study, develop, and implement process automation, advanced data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches in fabrication, testing, characterization, experimentation and data correlations for fuel cell and electrolyzer systems; (2) We will focus on accelerating scale-up fabrication science and on understanding processing-structure-properties-performance correlations in these systems by using above tools; (3) We will focus on rational design and synthesis of next generation functional, highly-performing and stable catalysts and electrolytes for these systems, and study their properties, interfacial phenomena, performance and degradation mechanisms. The final and most important focus of REACH2 NoN is to enable effective and systematic networking, scientific exchange, sharing of ideas and knowledge, and synergistic training and education of next generation leaders in clean energy. During the Design phase of our Network, we will have three main planning goals that will enable launch of the REACH2 NoN and its successful implementation: (1) Design and establish the Network roadmap, with mission, goals, models, and activities to promote collaborative synergistic research innovation and scientific discovery; (2) Plan and establish a suite of shared and publicly accessible tools and platforms for data sharing, storage and processing; (3) Design shared training programs for development of future workforce and next generation of experts and leaders.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
