UW team earns $2.5 million ARPA-E H2SENSE award

Mechanical Engineering Professor Scott Sanders and Scientist Matthias Beuting are leading a UW-Madison team that aims to develop novel sensors for detecting hydrogen gas leaks.  The team also includes Mechanical Engineering Professors Sage Kokjohn and Luca Mastropasqua, and has been selected for a ~$2.5 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

The funding is part of the H2SENSE Exploratory Topic, which seeks to develop and validate large-area hydrogen sensing technologies. The UW project, Large-Survey-Area H2 Leak Detector based on a Quadcopter-Mounted Laser Imager, will develop a precise hydrogen sensor and a novel laser-based system to image and record videos of hydrogen leaks. The team plans to mount a laser on a drone and use it to image hydrogen leaks at industrial facilities. Computer algorithms, data science, and computational fluid dynamics will be used on the videos to estimate leak rates.  

Hydrogen is increasingly seen as a clean energy source and decarbonization agent for industry and transportation. The projects supported by H2SENSE seek to detect and quantify hydrogen emissions throughout the supply chain to maximize the climate benefits of hydrogen production.

“I am excited to work with Matthias, Sage, Luca, and others on this project,” says Sanders. “I am grateful for the opportunity: who wouldn’t want to work on a project involving lasers and drones? We believe our approach has the potential to revolutionize the way hydrogen leaks are monitored. Hydrogen is one of the most invisible gases known, but we believe we have an effective way to image it.”

Learn more about the other projects funded by ARPA-E.

The team is hiring a postdoctoral associate to work on this project. Learn more about the opportunity.