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Advances in Sustainable Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Research

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 372

Special Issue Editors

College of Smart Energy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Interests: hydrogen production; fuel cells; electro-hydro coupling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
School of Energy and Power Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
Interests: hydrogen production and utilization; photothermal and photocatalytic utilization of solar energy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past century, the extensive use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas has driven rapid industrial development, but it has also resulted in unprecedented environmental pollution, global warming, sea-level rise, and a series of escalating crises. To address these challenges, a broad global consensus has emerged around carbon neutrality, highlighting the urgent need for clean alternative energy sources and advanced energy-conversion pathways. Hydrogen, featuring high energy density, diversified production routes, and zero carbon emissions at the point of use (producing water as the only by-product), is widely recognized as a highly promising clean energy carrier. Fuel cells, as a key technology for efficiently converting hydrogen into electricity and power, play a pivotal role in enabling the hydrogen economy. Nevertheless, before hydrogen can be utilized at scale, significant theoretical and engineering challenges remain across production, storage, transportation, utilization, safety, and system integration, calling for continued innovation and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

This Special Issue will invite advanced technologies, original theories, and trends in the field of hydrogen energy and fuel cells, including experimental research, numerical research, systematic research, review research, etc., to be peer-reviewed for publication. Topics suggested in this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following: water electrolysis for hydrogen production, novel hydrogen production technologies, hydrogen-based fuels, high-pressure hydrogen storage and transportation, liquid hydrogen storage and transportation, solid-state hydrogen storage and transportation, fuel cells, hydrogen-powered propulsion and mobility, hydrogen safety and standards/codes, and intelligent design and optimization of hydrogen energy systems.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Shanke Liu
Dr. Yan Yang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • hydrogen production
  • hydrogen storage
  • hydrogen transportation
  • hydrogen utilization
  • hydrogen economy
  • hydrogen policy

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 1346 KB  
Article
Physics-Informed TD3 Scheduling for PEMFC-Based Building CCHP Systems with Hybrid Electrical–Thermal Storage Under Load Uncertainty
by Qi Cui, Chengwei Huang, Zhenyu Shi, Hongxin Li, Kechao Xia, Xin Li and Shanke Liu
Sustainability 2026, 18(9), 4203; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18094203 - 23 Apr 2026
Viewed by 173
Abstract
This study addresses the optimal scheduling of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)-based building combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) system, aiming to improve operational efficiency and flexibility under coupled electricity–thermal–cooling demands and load uncertainty. A physics-informed scheduling environment was developed using [...] Read more.
This study addresses the optimal scheduling of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)-based building combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) system, aiming to improve operational efficiency and flexibility under coupled electricity–thermal–cooling demands and load uncertainty. A physics-informed scheduling environment was developed using component models and multi-energy balance constraints, including a PEMFC with waste-heat recovery, a lithium bromide absorption chiller, a reversible heat pump with condenser heat recovery to thermal storage, a battery energy storage system, and a hot-water thermal storage tank. The dispatch problem was formulated as a Markov decision process and solved using deep reinforcement learning with TD3; performance was evaluated on typical summer and winter days, and robustness was tested by generating 100 scenarios with 30% demand perturbations. The results show that TD3 learns coordinated multi-energy dispatch patterns consistent with seasonal operation and reduces hydrogen consumption relative to a rule-based strategy under uncertainty while requiring millisecond-level inference time. Dynamic programming achieved slightly lower hydrogen consumption but incurred orders-of-magnitude higher computation time. Overall, TD3 provides a practical trade-off between near-optimal performance, robustness, and real-time applicability for PEMFC-based building CCHP scheduling. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Sustainable Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Research)
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