RECycling Of high Value materials from fuel cell ElectRode assemblies (RECOVER)

The objective is to establish the technical and economic feasibility of recovery and re-use of high value materials from fuel cell electrode assemblies. These comprise perfluorosulphonic acid ion-conducting membrane (a highly specialised fluoropolymer), platinum-containing anode and cathode catalyst layers and carbon-fibre based gas diffusion layers. With the projected growth in demand for the carbon fibre and fluoropolymer materials, in both fuel cell and existing markets, if current resource inefficiencies are not addressed, this will increasingly lead to environmental issues and risk of supply disruption. Currently there are no established processes for recovering these high value materials from electrode products and the project therefore seeks innovative technical solutions to accomplish this, thereby improving efficiency in use of key resources, establishing the potential for a new UK-based global recycling business and increasing the competitiveness of the industrial end-user products