Partners

AD ASTRA participants are from 6 European countries. The project coordinator, ENEA, as well as CEA, DTU, EIFER, UNIGE, UNISA are members of Hydrogen Europe Research; Sunfire and SOLIDpower are members of the Hydrogen Europe industry grouping.

ENEA (Coordinator)

Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Italy)

CEA

Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (France)

DTU

Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Denmark)

EIFER

European Institute for Energy Research (Germany)

EPFL

École Politechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland)

IEES

Institute of Electrochemistry and Energy Systems (Bulgaria)

SOL

SOLIDpower (Italy)

UNIGE

Università degli studi di Genova (Italy)

UNISA

Università degli studi di Salerno (Italy)

SUN

Sunfire (Germany)

The consortium is formed on the basis of technical and scientific excellence and ability to collaborate effectively, which have been shown by their long-standing bilateral and multi-lateral cooperation in previous and on-going projects. It can be asserted that among the leading European research organizations and industries in SOC development and deployment are gathered in this project, each with tens of years of track record on the pathway to market readiness of the technology. The laboratories taking part in AD ASTRA have a record of quality assurance in SOFC/SOEC testing – particularly through their joint participation in SOCTESQA – that guarantees reliability and repeatability of the test results. Furthermore, the specific competences of each partner synergize perfectly:

the two industries, Sunfire and SOLIDpower, develop SOC stacks that are of different architecture (electrolyte-supported vs. electrode-supported) and temperature (750 vs. 850°C) and each focus on a different application area (CHP and P2X), and have a large body of field-tested stacks available for the project
CEA, EIFER and ENEA are among the leading energy research centres in Europe, with a wide range of important infrastructures for large-scale technology transfer, as well as benefiting from national mandates for policy support and standardization of technology and procedures
DTU, EPFL, UNIGE are top-level universities with longstanding direct collaborations with European fuel cell industries (Topsoe, SOLIDpower and Ansaldo Fuel Cells) giving them the empowering know-how to bring scientific concept to market
IEES and UNISA are the entities that bring in highly specialized knowhow from adjacent scientific fields, namely electrochemical analysis and applied probabilistic mathematics, with a proven record of application in fuel cells technology

AD ASTRA will gather the expert input from highly qualified External Advisors spanning from USA, Japan and South Korea, to form a world-class team of specialists, fully committed to solving the fascinating challenge of harnessing degradation mechanisms in controlled accelerated testing and smart, predictive modelling. The outcomes in terms of advancement of manufacturing capabilities and international adoption of the protocols and methods will then help to increase durability and quality assurance of European SOC stack technology.