Realizing the Hydrogen Economy through Semantic Web Technologies

  • Authors:
  • Jane Hunter;John Drennan;Suzanne Little

  • Affiliations:
  • Distributed Systems Technology Centre;Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, University of Queensland;University of Queensland

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Intelligent Systems
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Experts have been saying that we have only another 40 or so years of cheap recoverable crude oil left. Hydrogen fuel cells offer an alternative, clean, reliable source of energy for residential use, transport, and remote communities. Many observers view as inevitable the transition from an economy powered by fossil fuels to one based on hydrogen. Before that can happen, materials scientists face the research challenges of improving fuel cells' efficiency, reducing their production costs, determining how they degrade over time, extending their life, and recycling their components. The University of Queensland's Distributed Systems Technology Centre and the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis are working on FUSION (Fuel Cell Understanding through Semantic Inferencing, Ontologies and Nanotechnology) a collaborative project that's applying, extending, and combining Semantic Web technologies and image analysis techniques to optimize fuel cell design. The project is developing metadata schemas, ontologies, semantic-inferencing rules, and visualization tools. These products aim to streamline the capture and assimilation of large mixed-media data sets to reveal trends and correlations between the manufacturing conditions, microstructural information, and performance of fuel cells. The technologies being developed could set new paradigms for knowledge management and sharing across a wide range of scientific and microstructural engineering applications.