Advancing Hydrogen Technologies: An Interview with Prof. Bahman Shabani

Biography

Professor Bahman Shabani leads the Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Laboratory (SHEL) at RMIT University and has over two decades of internationally recognised experience in renewable hydrogen energy solutions. His research spans the full innovation pipeline, from fundamental materials and component development to system integration, prototyping, and industry translation, with a strong emphasis on real-world technology deployment. He has contributed to a broad portfolio of translational hydrogen innovations covering PEM fuel cells and unitised regenerative fuel cells, slurry-based proton flow reactors, advanced fuel-cell flow fields, fuel-cell heat-recovery architectures, efficiency-enhancement strategies, thermal management solutions, and fuel-cell fault diagnostics and water management. He serves as a subject-matter expert on Standards Australia hydrogen committees, contributes to the Australian Energy Transition Research Plan, and is a leading member of the Australian Hydrogen Research Network Strategy Group. His advisory activities extend globally and include an invitation from the Institute on Science for Global Policy, led by Dr George Atkinson, to provide expert insights on hydrogen’s role in renewable energy storage and energy-system resilience. Professor Shabani serves on the editorial boards of leading journals, including the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy and Scientific Reports (Nature). With over 100 highly cited publications, he has been listed among the world’s top 2% of energy experts since 2021. He has also acted as chief investigator on commercially oriented hydrogen projects exceeding AUD 9 million. Professor Shabani represented Australia in CSIRO and federal government hydrogen delegations to Singapore (2023), and the Netherlands (2024).

Professor Bahman Shabani

Future: As the leader of the Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Laboratory at RMIT, what are the primary goals of your research group, and how do they align with Australia’s national hydrogen strategy? how do you set research priorities that balance fundamental science with real-world applications?

Prof. Shabani: The primary goal of our research group is to deliver end-to-end green hydrogen solutions that are scientifically rigorous, technologically scalable, and commercially credible. Hydrogen research at RMIT University is organised as a large multidisciplinary ecosystem, bringing together more than 50 senior academics, over 20 research fellows, and 20–30 PhD researchers with expertise spanning the full hydrogen value chain. This includes renewable hydrogen production, storage, and transport through to utilisation, system integration, and techno-economic and policy analysis. Our vision is to position RMIT as a globally preferred partner for the hydrogen industry by addressing real-world challenges through a coherent progression from laboratory-scale innovation to pilot-scale demonstration and early commercial translation. Our research agenda is closely aligned with Australia’s National Hydrogen Strategy and its objective of establishing Australia as a globally competitive leader in green hydrogen technologies. We prioritise research that strengthens the techno-economic competitiveness of hydrogen-based energy and power systems. Examples of our key innovations and research orientations are proton batteries, proton slurry flow reactors (patented), unitised regenerative fuel cells, integrated renewable hydrogen systems, hybrid fuel cell powertrain energy management, fuel cell health monitoring and diagnostics, advanced thermal management of hydrogen systems, detailed PEM fuel cell and electrolyser design at both component (e.g., fuel cell components research and development) and system levels (i.e., involving balance of plants), integrated hydrogen–energy–water circularity, and integrated renewable hydrogen systems. Research priorities are set using a clear technology-readiness framework that balances fundamental advances, e.g. in materials, multiphase thermo-fluid behaviour, and electrochemical diagnostics, with system-level validation, prototyping, and industry-led deployment. This approach ensures strong scientific novelty while directly addressing national decarbonisation priorities across transport, remote and off-grid energy supply, and industrial applications, positioning SHEL as a translational platform bridging fundamental research with Australia’s long-term hydrogen ambitions.

Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Laboratory (SHEL), Bundoora East Campus, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Future: Your research has long focused on hydrogen energy systems and PEM fuel cells. In your view, what are the most significant recent breakthroughs in hydrogen technologies for large-scale energy systems?

Prof. Shabani:Focusing on hydrogen-based energy storage systems accompanying renewables, in my view, the most important recent advances in hydrogen technologies for large-scale energy systems are not single “breakthrough components,” but steady progress in making entire hydrogen systems practical, affordable, and reliable. Of course, much of the current focus is on improving the economic viability and durability of key components, particularly PEM electrolysers, PEM fuel cells, and balance-of-plant hardware. This includes reducing catalyst and material costs, extending component lifetimes, improving water and thermal management, and using better diagnostics and control strategies to slow degradation. Together, these developments are helping hydrogen systems move from short-term demonstrations toward long-life, commercially credible infrastructure. At the same time, there has been a clear shift toward optimising how hydrogen system components work together.Greater emphasis is now placed on integrated system design, where electrochemical, thermal, and fluid subsystems are co-optimised, and where energy and water circularity, e.g. waste heat recovery and water reuse or cogeneration of freshwater, play central roles in boosting overall efficiency. This is particularly important for hydrogen-based energy storage arrangements, which have traditionally struggled with high system complexity and relatively low round-trip efficiency compared with rechargeable batteries due to the need for multiple components, such as electrolysers, hydrogen storage, fuel cells, and extensive balance-of-plant systems.
Our work at RMIT University on proton batteries, proton flow reactor, and unitised regenerative fuel cells (URFCs) directly addresses these challenges by integrating hydrogen production, storage, and power generation into tightly coupled or single-device solutions. By simplifying system architecture and improving its round-trip energy efficiency, these approaches represent an important step toward scalable and competitive hydrogen energy storage for large-scale and long-duration applications. Balance-of-plant costs, including power electronics, compression, thermal management, and control infrastructure, also remain significant and are often underestimated at early design stages.

Relevant Publications

1 kW operational URFC system demonstration designed and manufactured at RMIT University by the SHEL research group. The project was led and co-led by Professor John Andrews and Professor Bahman Shabani, respectively.

Future: Following on the previous question, looking at integration of hydrogen with renewables, what are the practical hurdles for achieving cost-competitive hybrid systems combining wind/solar and hydrogen storage?

Prof. Shabani: Achieving cost-competitive hybrid systems that combine wind or solar with hydrogen storage is less constrained by technical feasibility than by system-level integration and economics.
A main practical hurdle is utilisation: renewable generation is inherently intermittent, while electrolysers, hydrogen storage, and downstream conversion devices perform best when operated close to their optimal duty cycles. Oversizing components to capture excess renewable energy increases capital cost, while under sizing leads to curtailed energy and poor asset utilisation. Striking the right balance between renewable capacity, electrolyser sizing, storage volume, and power conversion hardware remains a central challenge.
Cost competitiveness also depends heavily on intelligent system integration and control. Hybrid renewable–hydrogen systems must operate dynamically in response to weather, demand, market signals, and component ageing. Without advanced control and optimisation, systems tend to operate conservatively, sacrificing efficiency and increasing lifecycle cost. This is where improved co-design of hardware and control, increasingly supported by data-driven and AI-based optimisation, becomes critical. In practice, reducing cost is not about any single breakthrough, but about coordinated improvements in utilisation, integration, and operational strategy across the entire renewable–hydrogen system.
Another critical challenge, which is often underestimated in evaluating the feasibility of renewable–hydrogen systems, is the supply of freshwater to electrolysers, which are powered by the excess PV/wind energy. At large scale, this can place significant stress on local water resources, particularly in arid or remote regions where wind and solar resources are often strongest. In principle, producing 1 kg of hydrogen requires at least 9 kg of high-purity water; however, when purification losses, cooling requirements, blowdown, and balance-of-plant inefficiencies are considered, real-world water demand can be 30–50% higher. While water generated on the fuel cell side can theoretically be recycled, practical recovery rates are well below 100%, meaning external water supply remains necessary in most systems. To put this into context, quantitative assessments show that a 100 MW electrolyser operating at high capacity can require several hundred thousand cubic metres of freshwater per year, comparable to the annual water demand of a small town or a significant agricultural operation. This indicates that water availability can become a binding constraint on hydrogen deployment, independent of electricity cost or technology maturity. In our work, this challenge is addressed by recycling waste heat from the fuel cell to energise an on-site desalination arrangement. An important finding is that the available low-grade heat is not only sufficient to meet the electrolyser’s freshwater demand but also can exceed it. As a result, the same renewable hydrogen system can produce surplus freshwater beyond its own needs, contributing to local community water supply alongside clean energy provision. This integrated energy–water approach transforms freshwater from a limiting factor into a co-benefit, substantially improving the overall sustainability and societal value of large-scale renewable hydrogen systems.

Relevant Publications

SHEL’s lab-scale experimental setup of electrolyser/fuel cell waste heat powered DCMD system

Future: Your work on PEM fuel cells cold starts, and thermal management— what this part of your research addresses challenges and opportunities in related to automotive applications?

Prof. Shabani: Another major opportunity, and often an underutilised one, lies in thermal integration and waste heat utilisation. Unlike battery-electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell systems generate substantial low-grade waste heat, which can be strategically recovered and reused. An effective thermal integration can simultaneously address several critical challenges: i.e., mitigating cold-start issues in PEM fuel cells, supporting the thermal needs of the onboard battery pack, maintaining optimal operating conditions under both hot and cold climates, and making the fuel cell thermal management system more compact. By treating thermal management as an integrated system problem rather than an auxiliary function, it becomes possible to improve overall vehicle efficiency while enhancing reliability in extreme environments. Together, advanced AI-based energy management and intelligent use of waste heat represent two of the most impactful levers for overcoming current scaling barriers and enabling robust, cost-effective hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Another strand of our work directly relevant to vehicle applications focuses on addressing the cooling challenge in fuel cell vehicles. While the relatively low operating temperature of PEM fuel cells offers advantages such as rapid start-up, it also complicates thermal management. The small temperature difference between the coolant and the ambient environment results in a weak driving force for heat rejection, limiting the effectiveness of conventional cooling systems. The most straightforward response is to increase radiator surface area; however, this is often impractical due to tight packaging and geometric constraints in automotive platforms, particularly in heavy duty vehicles (e.g., trucks). To overcome this limitation, we explored the use of nanofluids as advanced coolants, with the aim of increasing the overall heat transfer coefficient rather than enlarging the radiator. By enhancing convective heat transfer, this approach enables a reduction in radiator size of up to approximately 25%, without compromising thermal performance. At the same time, our work recognises the remaining challenges associated with nanofluid implementation, particularly long-term stability and the need to maintain electrical conductivity below critical thresholds to avoid the risk of short-circuiting within the fuel cell stack. In parallel, we also investigated novel compact radiator designs with very high thermal effectiveness and demonstrated new concepts through design, fabrication, and implementation. These approaches aim to maximise heat rejection within the tight packaging constraints of automotive fuel cell systems, further reducing reliance on large conventional radiators. As this work is currently subject to ongoing IP protection processes, it is not possible to disclose further technical details at this stage.

Relevant Publications

SHEL’s Proton Flow Reactor Team; funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and Eldor Corporation (Italy). The project was led by Professor John Andrews.

Future: What key insights have you gained from your studies on carbon corrosion in PEM fuel cells, and how might they impact the durability of hybrid fuel cell-battery systems in automotive applications?

Prof. Shabani: Scaling PEM fuel cell technologies for automotive applications remains challenging primarily because performance, durability, cost, and control are tightly coupled at the system level rather than determined by the fuel cell stack alone. Our work on carbon corrosion in PEM fuel cells adopts a system-oriented perspective that is closely aligned with the realities of automotive operation. Rather than treating corrosion as a purely materials-level phenomenon, we examine it in the context of highly dynamic load profiles, frequent start–stop events, and extended low- or idle-load operation, all of which are characteristic of fuel cell electric vehicles. This is especially relevant for hybrid fuel cell–battery architectures, where rapid power transients and mode switching can expose the fuel cell to operating regimes that are known to accelerate carbon corrosion. In hydrogen vehicles, fuel cells are almost always integrated with batteries and/or supercapacitors, which means overall system performance depends heavily on real-time energy and power management. Designing control strategies that can simultaneously optimise efficiency, component lifetime, and cost under highly dynamic driving conditions is non-trivial. Poor power-split decisions can accelerate fuel cell degradation, oversize components, and increase hydrogen consumption. In this context, the transition toward AI-enabled, multi-objective control is a major opportunity. Data-driven and learning-based energy management strategies can adapt to changing operating conditions, component ageing, and driver behaviour in real time, offering a practical pathway to improve efficiency and durability without adding hardware complexity.
Our approach focuses on understanding how electrochemical, thermal, and water management processes interact under transient conditions and how these interactions influence long-term durability. We study carbon corrosion alongside related degradation mechanisms within an integrated framework that considers stack design, balance-of-plant behaviour, and control strategies. By doing so, we aim to identify operating conditions and system-level interactions that are most critical to durability, particularly during cold starts and on/off cycling.
From an application perspective, this research underscores the importance of addressing carbon corrosion through coordinated solutions rather than isolated fixes. Improved materials and stack designs must be coupled with intelligent energy and power management, increasingly enabled by AI-based, multi-objective control strategies, to limit exposure to high-risk operating regimes. This integrated approach is central to improving the durability and reliability of hybrid fuel cell–battery systems in demanding real-world automotive environments.

Relevant Publications

Future: Hydrogen storage remains a key obstacle for many energy applications. Could you explain the role of advanced materials — such as metal hydrides— in overcoming storage and thermal management challenges?

Prof. Shabani: Hydrogen storage is fundamentally challenged by hydrogen’s very low volumetric energy density under ambient conditions. To store a useful amount of energy in a reasonable volume, hydrogen must either be highly compressed or liquefied. In applications with tight space constraints, most notably automotive systems, this typically leads to compressed storage at pressures up to 700 bar. While effective, such high-pressure storage introduces complexity, cost, and safety considerations, as well as penalties associated with compression energy and bulky balance-of-plant components.
Advanced material-based storage, particularly metal hydrides, offers an alternative approach by storing hydrogen in atomic form through reversible bonding with a metal or alloy. The key advantages are high volumetric energy density and enhanced safety, since hydrogen is not stored as a large inventory of pressurised gas, and charging can often occur at relatively low pressures. However, these benefits come with trade-offs. Metal hydride systems are heavy, resulting in low gravimetric energy density (not suitable for automotive applications), and hydrogen charging and discharging are inherently slower than in compressed gas systems. Most importantly, absorption and desorption are strongly coupled with heat release and heat demand, making thermal management a critical design challenge.
Our work in this area focuses on addressing these thermal constraints through system-level innovation rather than relying solely on material improvements. We have introduced both passive and active thermal management concepts that recover waste heat from fuel cells to support hydrogen desorption, as well as self-sufficient thermal designs using phase change materials (PCMs). In these approaches, heat released during hydrogen charging is stored and then reused during discharge, enabling stable hydrogen flow without continuous external heating or cooling. By integrating storage and thermal management in this way, metal hydride systems can operate more efficiently, with reduced auxiliary energy demand, making them far more attractive for practical hydrogen energy applications.

Passive thermal bridging of fuel cell and Metal Hydride hydrogen storage canisters: using hot air out of an open-cathode PEM fuel cell stack

Thermally enhanced PCM (using metal foam) used for self-sufficient thermal management of metal hydride hydrogen storage canisters for charging and discharging

Relevant Publications

As costs fall and deployment scales, hydrogen is well positioned to become a central pillar of a net-zero global energy system by supporting electrification.

Future: Can you elaborate on the non-model-based approaches you’ve developed for real-time water management in PEM fuel cells and their implications for fault diagnostics?

Prof. Shabani: Our work on real-time water management-related health monitoring in PEM fuel cells adopts a deliberately non-model-based, data-centric approach aimed at overcoming the practical limitations of physics-based modelling in real operating environments. In automotive and portable applications, accurately modelling two-phase water transport, membrane hydration dynamics, and transient electrochemical behaviour in real time is extremely challenging due to strong nonlinearities, parameter drift, stack-to-stack variability, and limited sensor availability. As a result, high-fidelity models are rarely suitable for on-board control or diagnostics. To address this, we focused on extracting water-state information directly from measurable electrical and electrochemical signals using advanced signal processing and machine-learning techniques. Our methods analyse voltage responses, dynamic current signatures, and impedance-derived features, often in the time–frequency domain, to capture subtle changes associated with flooding, membrane dehydration, and reactant maldistribution. Neural networks and other AI-based classifiers are trained on these feature sets to learn characteristic patterns linked to different water conditions, without requiring explicit knowledge of internal stack geometry or water transport mechanisms. This makes the framework inherently adaptive and transferable across different stacks, operating conditions, and ageing states. A key technical advantage of this approach is its suitability for real-time implementation. The algorithms are computationally efficient, rely on existing measurements, and can be embedded within fuel cell control units. Beyond water management, these methods naturally extend to fault diagnostics and health monitoring. Water imbalance is closely coupled with several degradation pathways, including carbon corrosion, catalyst detachment, and membrane ageing. By identifying abnormal water states early through AI-based pattern recognition, the framework enables proactive fault detection and mitigation before irreversible damage occurs. Overall, this work supports a shift toward intelligent, condition-aware PEM fuel cell systems, where water management, diagnostics, and control are tightly integrated.

Relevant Publications

Future: Your group collaborates with industry and defence partners (e.g., proton battery and fuel cell APU projects). How do these collaborations influence research direction and technology transfer?

Prof. Shabani: Our collaborations with industry and defence and non-defence industry partners play a central role in shaping both the direction of our research and the pathway to technology transfer. These partnerships ensure that our work is grounded in real application requirements rather than purely academic performance metrics. From the outset, research questions are framed around practical constraints such as operating environments, reliability targets, safety standards, manufacturability, and cost, which significantly influences system architecture, component design, and control strategies.
A key feature of these collaborations is a structured, systematic progression through technology readiness levels (TRLs). We typically start with concept development and laboratory-scale proof of feasibility, followed by increasingly integrated prototypes, validation under realistic operating conditions, and pre-commercial demonstrations. Industry and defence partners provide critical input at each stage, helping to define performance benchmarks, test protocols, and integration requirements, while also exposing early-stage concepts to real-world use cases. This TRL-driven approach reduces technical risk and avoids the common disconnect between promising laboratory results and deployable products.
Importantly, these collaborations also accelerate technology transfer. Co-development arrangements, joint IP strategies, and early engagement with end users allow research outcomes to transition efficiently into protected intellectual property, pilot deployments, and ultimately commercial products. Examples such as proton battery systems, fuel cell auxiliary power units, and unitised regenerative fuel cell systems illustrate how sustained engagement with partners enables us to move beyond isolated prototypes toward complete, field-ready solutions. In this way, industry and defence collaborations act not only as enablers of relevance, but as essential mechanisms for translating research innovation into real-world hydrogen technologies.

RMIT 5 kw fuel cell APU designed for heavy duty vehicles

Future: For students and early-career researchers interested in sustainable energy, what skills or interdisciplinary competencies do you consider most valuable today?

Prof. Shabani: For students and early-career researchers interested in sustainable energy, particularly in the hydrogen sector, the most valuable capabilities can be grouped into three complementary skill categories, all of which are strengthened through hands-on laboratory experience. The first category is strong technical fundamentals. This includes a solid grounding in electrochemistry, thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, materials science, and power electronics, alongside specific knowledge of hydrogen technologies such as fuel cells, electrolysers, and hydrogen storage systems. Hands-on laboratory projects are essential here, as they allow researchers to connect theory with practice by assembling systems, conducting experiments, interpreting diagnostics, and observing real performance and degradation behaviour under realistic operating conditions.
The second category is systems and digital competency. Hydrogen technologies are inherently part of integrated, hybrid energy systems, so skills in system modelling, simulation, control, and optimisation are increasingly important. Practical lab work exposes researchers to real integration challenges, including sensor limitations, control constraints, and data quality issues, which in turn shape effective modelling and AI-based approaches. Familiarity with data analytics, programming, and machine-learning methods for diagnostics, health monitoring, and real-time control is becoming a key differentiator in this field.
The third category is translation and impact awareness. To move research beyond the laboratory, researchers must understand techno-economic analysis, lifecycle assessment, safety, and regulatory requirements. Laboratory-based projects, particularly those linked to industry or applied research, help bridge the gap between academic concepts and deployable technologies by highlighting constraints related to cost, durability, manufacturability, and scale-up. Researchers who combine strong fundamentals, systems thinking, and hands-on experience are best positioned to contribute meaningfully to the development and deployment of hydrogen and sustainable energy technologies.

Future: Looking ahead to 2030 and beyond, what are the most exciting and realistic prospects for hydrogen to play a central role in decarbonizing global energy systems?

Prof. Shabani: Looking toward 2030 and beyond, the most exciting and realistic prospects for hydrogen lie in areas where battery-based electrification alone is insufficient and where hydrogen can deliver clear system-level value. Hydrogen is increasingly positioned as a complementary energy vector that enables deep decarbonisation in many sectors. These include long-duration and seasonal energy storage, heavy transport, high-temperature industrial processes, and remote or off-grid energy systems where reliability and energy density are critical.
One of the strongest near- to medium-term opportunities is hydrogen’s role in large-scale and long-duration energy storage to support renewable-dominated power systems. As wind and solar penetration increases, hydrogen provides a pathway to absorb excess renewable generation, store energy over days to months, and supply power or fuels when renewable output is low. In parallel, hydrogen-based solutions in heavy-duty transport, such as long-haul trucks, buses, rail, shipping, and potentially aviation, are becoming increasingly realistic as fuel cell durability improves and refuelling infrastructure expands.
Hydrogen also has a compelling role in industrial decarbonisation, particularly in steelmaking, chemicals, and refineries, where it can replace fossil-based feedstocks and high-temperature fuels. Importantly, progress toward 2030 will be driven less by isolated technological breakthroughs and more by system integration, cost reduction, and scale. Continued advances in electrolyser manufacturing, durability, and efficiency, combined with intelligent integration of hydrogen with renewables, heat, water, and digital control, will be decisive.
In my view, beyond 2030, the most transformative impact of hydrogen will come from its integration into broader energy, industrial, and water systems, enabling flexible, resilient, and low-carbon energy infrastructures. As costs fall and deployment scales, hydrogen is well positioned to become a central pillar of a net-zero global energy system by supporting electrification.

Relevant Publications

We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Prof. Bahman Shabani for generously sharing his time, expertise, and visionary insights on hydrogen energy systems, fuel cells, and the future of sustainable energy. His thoughtful reflections on research innovation, industry collaboration, and the role of hydrogen in global decarbonization provided invaluable perspectives for our readers. We sincerely appreciate his openness, clarity, and commitment to advancing clean energy technologies, and we thank him for contributing to an inspiring and impactful conversation with Future Publishing LLC.
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Advancing Hydrogen Technologies: An Interview with Prof. Bahman Shabani

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