Internship Fuel Cell Catalyst Development and Testing

At PowerCell we are working hard at delivering powerful hydrogen powered fuel cells and systems to our customers around the world. The demand for our products is steadily increasing and we’re at the forefront of fuel cell development. We believe in our tech and we believe in our people’s ability to deliver the best solutions for hydrogen fuel cells on the market, today and tomorrow.

At PowerCell, we develop both fuel cell stacks and systems for various applications. The continuous improvement of efficiency, performance and durability is very important. There the fuel cell catalysts play an important role. For the purpose of an efficient support to our engineering process from early development phase until implementation and integration in customer use-cases, PowerCell is about to develop fundamental catalyst charcterization tools. An appropriate method is here the rotating disk electrode (RDE), which is a well-known and effective technique to analyze and compare the activity and durability of electrocatalysts in lab scale without the influence of other components in a fuel cell.

We are therefor looking for Internship Students to support us in the development process of our fuel cell catalyst evaluation capabilities. We offer the possibility to extend the internship with a Master Thesis at PowerCell. Possible topics for the internship are:

- Evaluation of catalysts with respect to activity for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR)
- Analysis of degradation behaviour of catalysts, targeting different degradation mechanisms
- Investigation of the influence of important catalyst properties, like Pt particles size / size-distribution and type of carbon support
- Development of accurate and reproducible test methods for fuel cell catalysts using RDE
- Optimization of ink receipt and procedure for coating and drying of RDE electrodes


Required qualifications:

- Successful participation in a M.Sc. program or similar in chemical / process engineering, mechanical engineering, technical physics or similar; preferably all courses finished
- Self-driven, highly engaged and motivated personality, with a strong problem-solving approach
- Fluent in English, both oral and written


Additional desirable qualifications:

- Experience with the RDE method
- Material science background
- PEM fuel cell catalyst and fuel cell stack knowledge and/or experimental experience
- Knowledge of supported Pt catalyst
- Knowledge in electrochemistry
- Practical experience of laboratory work
- Experience from an international and multi-language environment
- Swedish language skills


At PowerCell we aim for establishing teams with a balanced member composition regarding knowledge, experience, age, nationality, and gender.

Apply by visiting careers.powercell.se