Advent Technologies has said that its second-generation fuel cell membrane electrode assembly (MEA) technology offers more than double the power density of its legacy MEAs, has significant potential for lifetime improvement and “superior” heat rejection.
The US-headquartered firm, with operations in Greece, said that its Advent MEA G2 technology, developed under a US Department of Energy (DOE) programme, for high-temperature PEM (HT-PEM) fuel cells had overcome challenges from the first-generation technology.
Designed to use e-methanol, RNG and hydrogen, the legacy HT-PEM MEAs originally offered low power density and low lifetimes compared to low-temperature PEM fuel cells, despite high thermal management efficiency.
Operating at 160oC, the legacy MEAs produced a nominal power of 0.14W/cm2. However, Advent says its G2 technology has more than doubled power output to 0.25W/cm2, with targets of achieving 0.7W/cm2 in the G3 version at 0.7V@1A.
Despite still being lower than LT-PEM MEAs, the company claims the advantage of using liquid fuels such as e-methanol, rather than compressed hydrogen, and the elimination of water management and thermal management components results in a simpler system.
With a particular focus on deploying the technology in off-grid, portable power and marine sectors, the company believes green hydrogen-based e-methanol will prove successful.
“It is highly inefficient to decarbonise these sectors with compressed hydrogen,” said Dr. Chris Kaskavelis, Chief Strategy Officer at Advent. “We can decarbonise these sectors with green hydrogen without investing in prohibitively expensive hydrogen transportation, dispensing, and liquefaction infrastructure.”
In addition to the power increases, Advent says the G2 MEAs are low-phosphoric acid which “promises” to increase the lifetime of fuel cell systems.
Emory DeCastro, Advent Chief Technology Officer, explained, “When operating at high power outputs, Advent MEAs degrade four times slower (4.1µV/min. vs. 16µV/min.) than legacy MEAs used in previous HT-PEM systems, including Advent’s 1,200 deployed systems.
“When combined with outstanding start-up/shut-down stability (0.02mV loss per cycle vs 0.50 mV loss, or a 25-fold improvement), we expect that we’ll see fuel cell systems easily surpassing the 10,000-hour lifetime even when operating in extreme conditions, and soon, 15,000 hours of operation.”
Furthermore, the firm says its systems operating at 160-180oC have exceeded the DOE’s heat rejection goal.
“We have achieved the MEA performance that will enable leading OEMs to manufacture fuel cells that last at least three times as long and have double the power density of our previous systems,” Advent CEO, Vasilis Gregoriou, claimed.
“We aim to enable OEMs to manufacture fuel cell systems that use e-fuels like e-methanol for a CAPEX cost below $0.1/kWh. If we add the cost of e-methanol (in the interim, low-cost methanol), we have a highly competitive green solution that beats diesel gensets and combustion engines in terms of cost.”
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