ECEC Research
The Electrochemical Engine Center (ECEC) was founded in 1997 as the Multiphase Transport and Electrochemical Engine Laboratory by the present director, Dr. Chao-Yang Wang. The mission of the ECEC is to conduct fundamental and applied research on fuel cells and advanced batteries for electric propulsion, stationary power generation and portable electronics.
The research group has a unique combination of both computational and experimental capabilities. The computational modeling allows for the relatively easy and rapid testing of hypotheses aimed at improving the performance of electrochemical devices, while the experimental testing provides a method of verifying the most promising hypotheses. The experimental results can then feed back information to improve the models.
The ECEC has collaborating faculty and researchers from academia, national labs and many vehicle manufacturers. The interdisciplinary nature of the center includes expertise in thermal-fluid transport, electrochemistry, chemical kinetics and reacting flows, computational fluid dynamics and experimental design and testing. This multitude of individual talents allows the ECEC to solve a wide variety of problems encompassing several disciplines.