Research and Development

University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières

NioBay is proud to announce its participation in a research project with UQTR. This project will focus on the “Development of a new porous niobium-based transport layer for water electrolysis by proton exchange membrane”.

Hydrogen is one of the most efficient energy carriers and can be produced by various methods. Among them, proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer (“PEMWE”) is considered the most promising technique to produce very pure hydrogen from renewable energy sources with pure oxygen as a by-product, without carbon emission.

The porous transport layers (“PTL”) must meet certain requirements to work inside the cell, such as good electrical and thermal conductivity, high corrosion resistance, minimal contact resistance and low mass transport losses. Niobay and UQTR will develop a new Niobium-based PTL for the PEMWE that will meet all these criteria. This project was made possible thanks to the participation of PRIMA Québec and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

It should be noted that Niobium is seen as a potential substitute for the commonly used platinum group elements (PGE).

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University of Waterloo

The research, entitled “Development of Niobium-based Bipolar Plates for PEM Fuel Cells” aims to analyze fuel cells in regard to the role of niobium. This would allow to produce fuel cells at a lower price while increasing the resistance to corrosion.

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