ARCI Workshop Marks National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day

A workshop held to mark National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day brought scientists, academics, industry experts, technologists, research scholars and students together to review where India stands on the hydrogen value chain. The meeting was organised by the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), an autonomous research and development centre of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), and was held at the IIT Madras Research Park in Chennai on 13 October 2026. It was the 9th Workshop on Recent Advancements in Hydrogen Value Chain, and about 150 delegates from academia, research institutes and industry took part, several of them delivering lectures in the technical sessions.

The materials India is building

Dr R. Vijay, Director of ARCI, said the country is working on research and development of advanced materials for home-grown hydrogen and fuel-cell technology. He listed the components involved:

• Electrocatalysts
• Bipolar plates
• Membrane electrode assemblies
• Fuel-cell stacks
• Alkaline electrolysers for producing hydrogen

Five sovereign commitments

Professor R. R. Sonde of IIT Delhi-Abu Dhabi, the Guest of Honour, set out five sovereign commitments covering energy independence, economic development, net-zero emissions and industrial decarbonisation, universal access to energy, and a clean environment. He argued for using several hydrogen production routes built on locally available biomass, so that a domestic hydrogen ecosystem comes up faster, a sound hydrogen economy takes shape and national energy independence is strengthened.

What the sessions covered

The deliberations ran across hydrogen generation, storage, purification and use, with particular weight on fuel-cell technology, mobility applications, safety, standards and industrial deployment. Dr R. Subasri, Associate Director of ARCI, spoke of the growing need to move towards cleaner and more sustainable energy technology to protect the environment and keep the planet safe for later generations. Taken together, the sessions showed how many disciplines hydrogen technology draws on, from basic materials research and component engineering to production, storage, system integration and deployment in industry.