Profile
Xianguo Li is a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering and a university research chair at the University of Waterloo. His research covers fuel cells, liquid fuel atomisation and green energy systems. He is the author of Principles of Fuel Cells, a textbook used by researchers and students around the world.
He has published widely in journals and conference proceedings, serves as editor in chief of the International Journal of Green Energy, and is a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Engineering Institute of Canada and the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering. He is also president of the fuel cell division of the International Association for Hydrogen Energy.
At the conference
His keynote addressed why PEM fuel cells lose performance over time and how to extend their working life. It set out the thermal, chemical and mechanical mechanisms involved, the interactions between them, and the accelerated stress tests used to study failure. It then considered ways to slow degradation and the materials, manufacturing and design work needed to reach low cost, high performance and durable fuel cells.
The talk connected a laboratory question to the commercial one: a fuel cell stack is only useful if it stays efficient for long enough to justify its cost.
More speaker profiles are on the keynote speakers page. The full programme is on the conference programme page.