CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Advent Technologies, an innovation-driven company in the fuel cell and hydrogen technology space, today announced that it has reached an agreement to collaborate with Los Alamos National Labs, University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), University of New Mexico and Toyota Motor North America R&D (TMNA R&D) to continue development of next-generation high-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (HT-PEM) fuel cell technology for the automotive industry. The program is funded by an Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (“ARPA-E”) OPEN award.
Dr. Vasilis Gregoriou, Advent’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, commented: “We at Advent are committed to bringing HT-PEM technology to the market. Drawing on our leadership team’s decades of experience, we intend to commercialize and scale-up membrane electrode assembly (MEA) production while working closely with Tier-1 manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers. We believe that HT-PEM represents not only a breakthrough for heavy-duty automotive technology but also for aviation, portable, and off-grid power generation.”
Dr. Emory DeCastro, Advent’s Chief Technology Officer, added: “We are very excited to work with LANL (Los Alamos) and our other partners to advance this technology. These developments have the potential to lead to groundbreaking cost savings – including dropping overall fuel cell system costs by 25% and enabling higher power density and simplify packaging constraints. Furthermore, the potential to use eFuels instead of hydrogen can provide a significantly lower total cost of ownership and allow for faster deployment of fuel cell technology across the industry.”
The purpose of the development program is to use HT-PEM technology operating at 80oC-150oC to achieve a variety of objectives, including:
| 1. | High Energy Efficiency: The target efficiency of the HT-PEM simplified fuel cell system is 70% vs. 60% for current incumbent technology; thereby providing a significant total cost of ownership advantage. This is especially important for long haul trucks using hydrogen fuel cells. | |
| 2. | Fast Startup Time: Develop extremely stable fuel-cells that can start under nearly water-saturated conditions. | |
| 3. | Superior Heat Management: Completely remove the external humidifiers/demisters and substantially reduce the size of the radiator. Various industry sources have stated that radiators for Class 8 Trucks running with low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (LT-PEM) technology are an enormous challenge. There is evidence that the size of the radiator required to run a Class 8 truck in hot and dry conditions (i.e. in places such as Nevada, Australia, Africa and India) is impractical and will pose a huge challenge for the deployment of current fuel cell technology. Next-generation HT-PEM technology aims to solve this problem. | |
| 4. | Increase Lifetime: Boost tolerance to impurities and improve performance with platinum and non-platinum catalysts. | |
| 5. | Address the hydrogen infrastructure challenge: Allow for the direct reformation of a variety of fuels (natural gas, methanol, ethanol, and zero-carbon emissions eFuels of the future) to low grade (impure) hydrogen within the vehicle, thus bypassing the need for expensive hydrogen storage, transportation, and de/compression technology and hydrogen refill stations. |
About Advent Technologies
Advent Technologies is an innovation-driven company in the fuel cell and hydrogen technology space. Our vision is to accelerate electrification through advanced materials, components, and next-generation fuel cell technology. Our technology applies to electrification (fuel cells) and energy storage (flow batteries, hydrogen production) markets, which we commercialize through partnerships with Tier1s, OEMs, and System Integrators. For more information on Advent Technologies, please visit the Company’s website at https://staging.advent.energy/
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