Investigation of a Manufacturing Process for Intermediate to Mass Production of Polymer Graphite Based Bipolar Plates for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

Dr. Gurau is a full-time tenure track Assistant Professor of Engineering Technology at Kent State University at Tuscarawas. Previously he worked for seven years as a Senior Research Associate in the Chemical Engineering Department at Case Western Reserve University where he served as Principal Investigator on several research programs funded by the State of Ohio’s Third Frontier Fuel Cells Program, by the U.S. Department of Energy or in collaboration with General Motors. In this quality he performed research on different fuel cell technologies, including numerical modeling and simulations (Computational Fluid Dynamics and systems optimization), experimental research design, fuel cell component characterization, fuel cell stack design etc. Dr. Gurau has more than two years experience in fuel cell industry with Energy Partners, l.c. (now Teledyne Energy Systems, Inc.) as a research specialist, where he modeled fuel cell phenomena in order to predict and optimize cell performance, including developing of analytical and numerical models (heat and mass transfer in multi-phase, multi-component flows with electro-chemical reactions, flows in porous media, etc). He is the author of several patents related to PEM fuel cells and the author of more than twenty publications in peer review journals or conference presentations in the fuel cells area. Dr. Gurau obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1998 from the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Miami.