Swanson School of Engineering

This morning we visited the Eaton European Innovation Center just outside of Prague. We learned about how their industrial sector is starting to separate from the rest of the electrification business, besides the aerospace sector since there are so many standards and regulations. Nevertheless, one innovation from the aerospace area that was on the slides that I think is crucial to global engineering challenges is the redesign of the fueling system using hydrogen fuel cells. This is because hydrogen fuel is more sustainable than the current system that is reliant on fossil fuels. I think it is interesting that the more sustainable alternative requires more difficult infrastructure, which puts Eaton in a slightly challenging situation because they described that they are becoming more customer centric, yet their customers in the aerospace industry are some of the major aircraft manufacturers.