Background
Hydrogen fuel cells are an emerging green technology aiming to replace fossil fuels in the transportation industry. Many automotive companies are developing hydrogen fuel cell systems for installation into green tech cars, trucks and buses.
Hydrogen fuel cells work on the principle of combining hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) to create water. Fuel cells are comprised of two electrodes, an anode and a cathode, separated by an electrolyte. Hydrogen, let in at the anode, is broken down into protons and electrons by a catalyst. The protons can migrate through the electrolyte to the cathode, where oxygen is waiting. The electrons can't pass through the electrolyte and are given an alternate path through a circuit. The electrons pass through the circuit to the cathode, so that they along with the protonated hydrogen atoms and oxygen can combine to create water.
Of course, real world implementations of fuel cells are far more complex. They involve stacks of fuel cells, pressed together, all of which need to be self contained. The smaller you can make the cells, the more of them you can pack together and the more energy you can produce. To keep each cell separated and to contain the reactants at high pressures and temperatures, specialized seals are needed.
My Role
I was a manufacturing engineer at the Mercedes-Benz Fuel Cell Division and was part of a three member team. My team was responsible for developing a screen printing process for one of the specialized seals used in the fuel cell stack. Over the course of my year there, my team took the concept and turned it into a fully operational manufacturing process. The end result was a screen printing process that could consistently produce seals with a margin of error of plus or minus 10 microns. To accomplish this, I researched screen-printing techniques as well as designed and executed large experiments. These experiments involved upwards of one hundred samples and generated a large amount of data. The large amount of data led to my second area of responsibility.
During the second half of my stay at the Fuel Cell Division I was given responsibility for developing a software system to automate the statistical analysis and display of data, within Microsoft Excel. The program was made in Visual Basic. The program took in raw data from a non-contact profilometer, sampling roughly 15 profiles from more than 100 samples. It would then consolidate and analyze the data before displaying in such a way that the user could deduce meaningful insights from the data. The program was used by senior manufacturing engineers within the division to analyze the results of their experiments and locate problem areas more efficiently.
I gained experience in:
- Experiment design.
- Statistical analysis.
- Root cause analysis.
- Software development.
- Preparing training documents.
- Training technicians.