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Hydrogen Economy Center of Economic Excellence
Inception: About the Center: The Hydrogen Economy Center is a part of the larger Future Fuels™ Initiative, which is expanding the University of South Carolina's (USC) expertise in fuel cells and alternative energy. The Center is developing catalysts that allow alternative fuels to be produced from renewable sources, which will be extremely important as the transportation sector moves away from dependence on imported oil and carbon-based fuel. The Center also coordinates state and local research projects to attract additional capital investment in fuel cell-related industry to South Carolina. To date, the Center has received more than $1.8 million in research funding. Work associated with this Center has led to the creation of a start-up company, Palmetto Fuel Cell Technologies. Along with other components of the Future Fuels™ Initiative, the Hydrogen Economy Center will be housed in the Horizon Center, a $55 million public-private facility at USC Innovista. The chairs for these Centers will work with public and private sector alliances such as the South Carolina Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Alliance and the Greater Columbia Fuel Cell Collaborative. USC presently has the nation’s only National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) for Fuel Cells, which was renewed in 2009 for five years. As a part of this renewal, the I/UCRC has become a multi-university endeavor with the addition of the University of Connecticut and five member companies: IBM, Fuel Cell Energy, Northeast Utilities Foundation, Siemens and D‐Star Engineering. These Centers have international collaborations with the Korea Institute of Energy Research and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy in Germany. To learn more about Centers of Economic Excellence fuel cell research at USC, click here. Funding level: SmartState Endowed Chair:
Horizon I is a five-story, 125,320-square-foot university research facility on the USC Innovista campus that is primarily devoted to the developmental research for future fuels, hydrogen, fuel cells, and polymer nanocomposites. Floors two and three are home to SmartState endowed chairs Dr. Brian Benicewicz and Ken Reifsnider and their research teams. First floor construction will be completed in January 2012 and will house SmartState endowed chair Jochen Lauterbach and IdeaLabs, a wet lab space.
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