Commissariat a Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatitives – CEA

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in various areas, amongst which low carbon energies (nuclear and renewable energies). CEA will be involved in this project through its Liten institute, which is devoted to the development of innovative technologies for the energy transition. The Electricity and Hydrogen for Transport Department (DEHT) develops new technologies (materials, components and systems) for fuel cells and electrolysers. The main topics addressed are material synthesis, development of MEAs, bipolar plates and stacks, characterization, modelling and system integration. The DTNM’s mission is developing new materials and innovative processes that are safe, sustainable, economical in critical materials and have a low environmental impact, and performing all types of characterizations and analyses of materials, components, structures and properties to support the developments of CEA Liten and partners technologies.

CEA has been an RTO involved in hydrogen research for over 30 years. As an RTO, CEA hopes to increase its knowledge of the phenomena that occur during aging of PEM technology, and of the links between the materials used, operating conditions and PFAS releases. This knowledge will be used to provide recommendations to mitigate environmentally harmful aspects during operation, and to provide guidelines to European and French governments to help them decide on future regulations for PFAS in hydrogen technologies.

The actions conducted as well as the collaboration with the high-level academic and industry partners involved will be beneficial to increase CEA’s know-how on PFAS impact and on potential elimination or mitigation solutions, in order to gain competitiveness in this field. It will give CEA more visibility both to develop existing or new industrial partnerships and also in the academic community thanks to scientific publications and conferences (thus opening the door to further research projects, e.g., EU cooperation).

CEA will be in charge of the project management and coordination.

CEA LITEN, as an expert in PEM technologies, including investigations of degradation phenomena coupling experiments and modelling, will contribute to the overall understanding and characterization process. CEA activities will support the methodology on sampling, contribute to exhausts analyses, and perform controlled tests of PEM fuel cell stack to produce samples to check and analyze PFAS emissions. Having access to materials of the core components CEA could provide some reference samples to the partners. CEA will also work on the modelling of the degradation mechanisms of the membranes involved both in the PEM fuel cell and water electrolysis technologies.