General Terms

ESHER is a national research infrastructure open to external users from industry, academia, business, institutions, and individual researchers from Bulgaria and abroad. At present, it offers a wide range of services carried out within two integrated laboratories – “Battery Energy Storage Research and Testing” and “Hydrogen Energy with RES” (Module 1), as well as within a Technological Development Platform (Module 2). The activities are performed in ten laboratories, located within the partner organizations, and the platform provides the technological and experimental basis needed for the development and testing of innovative battery-related solutions.

The names of the laboratories and the technological platform, together with the abbreviations of the institutions that host them and the number of available services, are listed below:

1. LABORATORY 1: Synthesis and Physicochemical Characterization of Inorganic Materials – IEES-BAS (5 services)
2. LABORATORY 2: Electrochemical Impedance Analysis – IEES-BAS (1 service)
3. LABORATORY 3: Battery Testing – IEES-BAS (2 services)
4. LABORATORY 4: Fuel Cells and Electrolyzers – IEES-BAS (3 services)
5. LABORATORY 5: Conjugated Polymers – IP-BAS (8 services)
6. LABORATORY 6: Electrode Materials for Batteries and Supercapacitors – IGIC-BAS (12 services)
7. LABORATORY 7: Hydrogen Production and Storage from RES – CL SENES-BAS (5 services)
8. LABORATORY 8: Hydrogen Production by Pulse and Photoelectrolysis – CHT-UCTM (2 services)
9. LABORATORY 10: Bioelectrochemistry and Bioenergetics – LB-PU (9 services)
10. LABORATORY 11: Chemical and Biochemical Reactors – IChE-BAS (4 services)
11. TECHNOLOGICAL PLATFORM: “Technological Development of Next-Generation Batteries” – IEES-BAS (2 services)

Submission of Service Requests and Reporting

To request a service, users must complete the standard application form available in the “Request and Report” section. The request must include the service name and the laboratory where it will be carried out.

For user convenience, each laboratory and each service is assigned a unique identification code (signature) to facilitate selection when filling in the request form. A detailed list of services, their distribution among laboratories, and the corresponding signatures of services and equipment can be found in the “Services List” section. Signatures of services and equipment are indicated at the beginning of each item in the list.

Users may also request the use of specific equipment (or groups of instruments) only. In such cases, the form must state the signatures of the selected equipment and the service category to which it belongs. A full list of available equipment can be found in the “Equipment” section.

For reporting purposes, a dedicated service report form must be completed, indicating the equipment used, the number of samples tested or synthesized, and the total equipment usage time in hours. If more than one instrument has been used, the total number of hours must be reported. The form is available in the “Request and Report” section.

Types of Users

External users:

Payment terms and service fees are specified after approval of the submitted request.

Internal users (members of ESHER partner organizations):

They pay only for consumables required for analyses and service activities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT REQUIREMENTS

Users must clearly acknowledge the contribution of ESHER in all publications, reports, posters, patents, or any presentation that includes data obtained through the infrastructure. The following acknowledgement must be used:

“This research was (partially) supported by the Ministry of Education and Science – National Roadmap for Research Infrastructures (2017–2023), Contract No. DO1-160/28.08.2018: ‘Research Infrastructure for Energy Storage and Hydrogen Energy (ESHER)’.”

If users do not wish the results to be made public (and/or the results are subject to patent protection), the services will be treated with strict confidentiality and will be accessible only to the respective head of the laboratory/technological platform.