Addressing the sustainability and criticality of electrolyser and fuel cell materials

Closed

Programme Category

EU Competitive Programmes

Programme Name

EuroHPC JOINT UNDERTAKING

Programme Description

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (hereinafter “EuroHPC JU”), will contribute to the ambition of value creation in the Union with the overall mission to develop, deploy, extend and maintain in the Union an integrated world class supercomputing and quantum computing infrastructure and to develop and support a highly competitive and innovative High Performance Computing (HPC) ecosystem, extreme scale, power-efficient and highly resilient HPC and data technologies.

Programme Details

Identifier Code

HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2022-07-01

Call

Addressing the sustainability and criticality of electrolyser and fuel cell materials

Summary

This topic addresses the sustainability of the fuel cell and electrolyser component supply chain by the development of technical advancements in:
(i) replacement of the critical (raw) materials currently used in fuel cells and electrolysers
(ii) reduction in the amount of CRM used
(iii) developing recycling approaches for materials critical for fuel cells and electrolysers, including novel means of dissociating and separating components.

Detailed Call Description

The following items are within the scope of this topic, which comprise both low and high temperature electrolyser and fuel cell technologies:

  • Development, characterisation and validation of novel materials free of critical raw materials, non-sustainable or environmentally unacceptable components, or with reduced content of such critical materials or components in fuel cells and electrolysers to levels consistent with the SRIA targets without compromising their performance and durability;
  • Development of innovative materials, coatings, processing routes, electrode architectures and cell designs to reduce platinum group metal and other CRMs loading in electrolysers and fuel cells;
  • Development of breakthrough high-efficiency solutions for recycling the critical materials and critical components of fuel cells and electrolysers, including associated separation steps, with focus on recycling of perfluoro sulfonic acid ionomers for reuse, and on recycling of iridium. Industrially mature technologies are already in use for platinum recycling, however, solutions designed to reduce the potential environmental impact of non-Pt components of a Pt alloy (for instance, non-exclusively, Ni and Co) within the recycle stream are within the topic scope;
  • Lifecycle analyses of the most prospective new technology/ies to demonstrate the sustainability of the proposed solutions.

The development of characterisation and test methods and protocols for evaluation of new and recycled materials and of complete cells is considered within the scope of the topic, however alignment should be made with those in use to qualify current state-of-the-art materials (i.e. those using critical raw materials, platinum group metals and perfluoro sulfonic acid membranes and ionomers). 
The maximum Clean Hydrogen JU contribution that may be requested is € 10,00 million – proposals requesting Clean Hydrogen JU contributions above this amount will not be evaluated.

Call Total Budget

€179,500,000

Thematic Categories

  • Research, Technological Development and Innovation

Eligibility for Participation

  • Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions

Eligibility For Participation Notes

Consortia should gather comprehensive expertise and experience from the European research community to ensure broad impact by addressing several of the items above. Partners should have proven expertise and the requisite means of electrolyser and fuel cells materials development, characterisation and testing.

At least one partner in the consortium must be a member of either Hydrogen Europe or Hydrogen Europe Research.

Call Opening Date

31/03/2022

Call Closing Date

31/05/2022

EU Contact Point

EuroHPC JU

info@eurohpc-ju.europa.eu

(Publish Date: 08/04/2022-for internal use only)