Gencell progresses for cost-effective fuel cell technology, ditching palladium

Israel based fuel cell technology provider, GenCell Energy, today (15th March) said that it has successfully substituted palladium with an economical substitute in a catalyst. It has now patented the catalyst technology in various regions.

The new catalyst conducts a similar process for generating hydrogen compared to that with noble metals. GenCell expects that the absence of palladium would substantially reduce the cost of production of fuel cells. This would also give Gencell a competitive cost advantage over its competitors.

Rami Reshef, CEO of GenCell, commented, “The current advancement removing palladium from the catalyst follows a comprehensive cost reduction effort which began in 2014 when GenCell successfully removed the noble metal platinum from its nickel-based catalyst compound.”

The company expects that the demand for its technology will increase, benefiting from low costs, as the deployment of fuel cell technology progress across various end-user sectors in the future.

Gennadi Finkelshtain, CTO, said, “In the longer term, the platinum shortage is likely to lead to production limitations for PEM fuel cell manufacturers, as all acid-based low-temperature fuel cell technologies require platinum or platinum group metals in their construction.”

“As alkaline fuel cells do not have this limitation, any restrictions imposed by platinum availability will not affect the Company’s pricing,” he further added,