Mike L. Perry is the founder and sole proprietor of Flow Cell Tech, LLC.
Mike is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society (ECS), and he took an early retirement from United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) in late 2019.
Mike has led multiple technology-development groups working on a variety of advanced electrochemical flow cell (EFC) technologies. This has included being the Principal Investigator on four different DOE-supported ARPA-e projects, which included directing research at multiple institutions beyond his core team at UTRC.
Mike is sole inventor or co-inventor on more than 80 issued U.S. Patents.
Mike currently serves on the Technical Advisory Board of several start-up companies working on EFC-based products. Mike is also available to consulton EFC systems.
My research has been primarily focused on polymer electrolyte fuel-cell (PEFC) and redox-flow battery (RFB) technologies, with my major fields of interest being in cell design, mass transport, in-situ performance diagnostics, and degradation mechanisms.
As a researcher in industry, I have strived to identify the key technology
barriers to the ubiquitous adoption of various electrochemical technologies,
and then identify and develop various concepts that can address these
issues. I first worked on fuel cells in grad school at U.C. Berkeley, and then
joined UTC Fuel Cells to continue my work on PEFCs. In 2009, I started
working on redox-flow-battery (RFB) technologies, which has been a richly
rewarding experience, since it leveraged the knowledge already acquired
doing research on PEFCs.
I am particularly interested in leveraging my experience in RFBs and PEFCs to other types of flow cells.
What are Flow Cells?
A flow cell is any type of electrochemical cell where one, or both, electrodes are in contact with flowing solutions that undergo charge-transfer reactions. The flowing solutions may be liquids, gases, or both.
Examples of electrochemical flow cells include: fuel cells, electrolyzers, and flow batteries.
Here are some examples of my previous technical contributions:
Improved the power density of RFB cells by > 10X. My team at UTRC was the first to demonstrate the now state-of-the-art RFB cell design, which includes zero-gap electrodes with interdigitated flow fields and electrodes that are comprised of relatively-thin, high-activity carbon papers (vs. carbon felts), and optimized membranes with high ionic conductivity and high selectivity for protons.
Have made multiple contributions to improved understanding of RFB fundamentals, including membrane transport, redox kinetics on carbon fibers, the source and sink of shunt currents in RFB stacks, and optimized flow-field designs.
Led a team at UTC Fuel Cells that successfully determined the root-cause for accelerated carbon corrosion in cathodes of PEFCs during repeated start-up and shutdown (SUSD) cycles. Also led the development and demonstration of various system-level mitigation strategies. Assisted other fuel-cell developers, including multiple automotive OEMs and Toshiba Fuel Cells to successfully implement these SUSD-decay mitigation strategies, many of which are used in most fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) today.
Using a physics-based model, verified by PEFC data, showed that a cathode controlled by ohmic losses (i.e., ionic or electronic transport) can result in an oxygen-concentration dependence that is ½ order at high current densities, unlike oxygen transport that is 1st order, since it obeys Fick’s Law.
Developed a novel suite of diagnostics for PEFCs, which utilize simple graphical procedures based on key limiting cases predicted by PEFC models. These diagnostics have been adopted by UTC and others to rapidly and effectively determine the root-cause(s) for changes in PEFC performance resulting from varying operating conditions, or due to degradation after extended operation, or after being subjected to accelerated-stress-test (AST) protocols.
Codeveloped a variety of novel water-management strategies for PEFCs, including passive cell designs (e.g., microporous bipolar plates) with novel flow fields. This included developing improved understanding of water transport in gas-diffusion layers, catalyst layers, and membranes. These strategies enabled both improved performance and substantially longer membrane lifetimes, which enabled PEFC stacks in transit buses, which have now demonstrated > 25,000 operating hours with circa-2006 PFSA membranes.
Codeveloped a variety of balance-of-plant improvements to enhance the durability, cost, and reliability of PEFC power plants, including hydrogen recycling sub-systems with no moving parts.
Developed an improved fundamental understanding of recoverable-decay mechanisms in PEFCs, which included developing new recovery procedures for multiple types of contaminates in PEFCs.