The Slovenian start-up ReCatalyst and public research organisation National Institute of Chemistry have been awarded a seal-of-excellence innovation project TITAN funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS).
Project Name
Feasibility and Viability of Next-Generation Conductive Ceramic Supports for PGM-based Electrocatalysts in Energy Conversion Devices
Project Number
Grant agreement ID: N2-0385
Project Time Frame
01.01.2025 – 30.06.2026
Project Description and Objectives
Project TITAN is centered around advancing electrocatalysis to facilitate efficient, durable and economically viable energy conversion in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell and PEM water electrolyzer technologies, playing a crucial role in realizing a hydrogen economy as promised by the EU’s Green Deal. While FC technology uses hydrogen as a fuel and oxygen from the air in order to produce clean electricity with water (and heat) as the only side product, WE technology does the reverse and uses water (and electrons) in order to split it into ‘green’ hydrogen and oxygen. The State-of-the-art (SotA) PEM FCs and PEM WEs, which have by far the highest power density among all FC and WE technologies on the market, still rely on irreplaceable rare and expensive platinum group metals (PGMs) such as Pt, Ir or Ru found in the electrocatalysts. These metals are also classified as critical raw materials (CRMs). In terms of the electrocatalysts, current SotA for PEM FCs are carbon-supported Pt-based materials, whereas for PEM WEs, the SotA is based, due to much higher voltage requirements in WEs (> 1.4 V), on un-supported Ir-based materials (or alloys of Ir and Ru). With the world’s race to net-zero emissions, both FCs as well as WEs are expected to have a critical role in the decarbonization of both the transport and energy sectors with ‘green’ hydrogen being the most critical for long-term storage of highly intermittent wind and solar energies, powering heavy transportation as well as decarbonizing many carbon-intensive industrial processes (steel, cement and ammonia production to name just a few). However, with the massive market need, in the case of PEM technologies also comes a massive migraine of PGM availability, which poses a significant bottleneck for future mass production of these critical decarbonization technologies. To address this critical need project TITAN builds upon the groundbreaking advancements achieved as part of Prof. Hodnik’s ERC StG 123STABLE and focuses on the next-generation electrocatalysts for both PEM FC as well as WE technologies by the utilization of Ru, Pt, and Ir nanoparticles as active catalysts that are supported on in-house developed advanced functional conductive ceramic titanium oxynitride (TiON).
Partners
Project funding
The total project budget is € 150 000,00.