Starting signal for the "i-skaB" project

Revolutionizing the production of fuel cells - thyssenkrupp Automation Engineering, together with seven partners from research and industry, wants to achieve nothing less in the i-skaB joint project. The common goal is innovative, scalable fuel cell production (i-skaB) and stack production in 30-second cycles. The project started at the beginning of the year and is funded by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport Affairs.

As part of i-skaB, fuel cell production processes are to be further developed in such a way that production, which is still largely manual today, can become fully automated. The aim is to increase annual production by a factor of 20: from up to 25,000 today to over 500,000 fuel cells per year on one line in the medium term. The degree of automation in production lines for fuel cells and their central components such as bipolar plates (BPP) and membrane electrode assemblies (MEA) is still very low. Currently, a production line has such short cycle times that it can only produce a few fuel cell stacks per day.

The project consortium is made up of five industrial companies and two research partners. Only the combined expertise of all partners will enable the future industrialization and scaling of fuel cell production.

Quality assurance based on computer vision and digital holography

The project requires fundamentally new, fully automatable and innovative production technologies. All key technologies of the production process are to be optimized, tested and validated within the project duration of three years. An important aspect of the project is, for example, the establishment of rapid optical quality assurance based on innovative computer vision approaches and 3D measurement techniques such as digital holography.

Further information

The i-skaB project (innovative, scalable fuel cell production), sub-project "Development, construction and testing of a digital holographic measurement system for quality assurance of fuel cell components" is funded by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport Affairs (BMDV) (funding reference 03B1 1033 C).

The project sponsor is Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH.

Project partner

• thyssenKrupp Automation Engineering GmbH (consortium leader)

• BMW Group

• Laufenberg GmbH

• SK LASER GmbH

• Siemens AG

• Center for Fuel Cell Technology GmbH (ZBT)

• Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM

Project duration

01.12.2022 until 30.11.2025