SBH Hydrogen Energy System

Bench-scale testbed converting sodium borohydride hydrolysis into electricity via a PEM fuel cell — designed, built, and operated end-to-end.

SBH Hydrogen Energy System — photo 1
SBH Hydrogen Energy System — photo 2
Photo 3 — coming soon

What it is

A bench-scale hydrogen energy system built and operated end-to-end: sodium borohydride (NaBH₄) hydrolysis generates hydrogen on demand, a purification stage cleans it to fuel-cell grade (CO < 10 ppm), and a PEM fuel cell delivers the electricity.

Highlights

  • Designed, assembled, and ran the full chain — reactor, purification, fuel cell, and instrumentation
  • The reaction is strongly exothermic (≈ −210 kJ/mol H₂), so thermal management decides system stability
  • Fuel cell characterized with IV curves and EIS — CO poisoning shows up in impedance before any visible power loss
  • Integrated operation revealed thermal coupling effects that never appear in isolated component tests
  • The validated thermal model became the basis for the follow-up simulation study

Quantitative results withheld pending publication.

→ Next: SBH Thermal Simulation extends this system into a 5-scenario heat-recovery study.

SBHHydrolysisPEM Fuel CellThermal AnalysisBench-scale