In 2002 MES ( being member of CEBI Networks) entered the fuel cell field.   The core competence of the R&D Fuel Cells department is the development, production and commercialization of PEM Fuel Cell Stack Systems with a small up to medium nominal power output (0.1 – 3 kW) ideal for portable, light mobile and UPS applications.

The main advantages of both systems is their simplicity, which means:

• No humidification of the reactant gases (no complex humidifiers)
• Close to ambient pressure on the cathode (no heavy air compressor)
• A forced air cooling (no elaborate liquid cooling of the stack)
• A modular layout (wide power range with the same cell design)
• Possibility to replace the single cell damaged without any problem.

And their light weight due to:

• Graphite bipolar plates
• Graphite based diffusion media
• Very simplified construction

By means of these features, MES has reached a high global efficiency, specific power and power density.

The MES  fuel cell laboratory is involved both in different Swiss scientific projects in which it will directly collaborate with important research institutes (i.e. in the go.PEF-CH project, the company works with the Paul Scherrer Institute in order to investigate aging and degradation phenomena in its technology) and as a partner in important European demonstration projects inside the Seventh framework programme (JTI-FCH) (i.e. in the Mobypost project, the company works to develop the concept of electric vehicles powered by fuel cells for mail delivery application for the French post).

Two important challenges that MES won thanks to their high specific power were: the first flight of a manned aircraft with a full fuel cell propulsion ( take-off and flight ) in the summer of the 2009 (http://www.hydrogen-flyingtour.org/), and the flight of a UAV in collaboration with the aerospace department of the Politecnico of Torino.

Furthermore thanks to the high efficiency of our technology in the 2011 the Polyjoule team has made most efficiency fuel cell vehicle in the world with an equivalent consumption of 5136 km/lt (http://www.polyjoule.org/).