Fuel Cell technology has received increasing attention over the last decade due to the promise of high efficiency & low emissions. Developing power systems based on this technology is fairly challenging and intrinsically multi-disciplinary. UTC Power has had a forty year history of fuel cell development with a strong focus on the combination of analysis and testing driven product development.

In this paper, the UTC Power development processes describing the development cycle of the power plants from concept design to eventual commercial release is highlighted. The role of Chemical engineers in these process steps is explained via examples centered on PEM and Phosphoric Acid based heat & power systems.

Fuel Cell power plants are complex systems that include reaction engineering, electrochemical process, flow in porous media, thermal energy management and water quality management issues. The control of the power plant for meeting steady & dynamic requirements can also prove to be challenging. Chemical engineers play a significant role in the development of these power plants in the areas of defining requirements, component & system design, controls, and verification of component and system performance. Participation in integrated product development (IPD) teams is crucial for optimal trade-off of the performance specifications of the different power plant components.

UTC Power relies heavily on a model driven development process to reduce development costs, accelerate innovation and reduce overall time to market. The foundation is a library of physics based models that leverage UTC Power's extensive experience with fuel cell technologies and related balance of plant components. For most components, there exist model versions with different levels of fidelity (detail of the physics). This enables rapid analysis/prototyping along the entire product development chain, starting from the concept development stages to customer delivery and field- testing. Both dynamic and steady state models and processes are backed up via careful documentation permitting easier reuse over multiple projects. Chemical engineers play a key role in the development and Verification & Validation of these models and processes. The model driven focus also facilitates systematic controls development via a combination of rapid prototyping approaches utilizing dynamic models, parameter estimation, Hardware-in-Loop, pictures to code processes and exploration of traditional & advanced controls approaches. This, combined with streamlined internal interactions between functional groups, has significantly reduced our overall development time while reducing process turnbacks.