Periodic Reporting for period 1 - StableCat (Assessing the Technical and Business Feasibility of Highly-active and Stable Intermetallic Pt-alloy Catalysts for Application in PEMFCs)
Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2023-02-28
ERC ‘PoC’ project StableCat aimed at assessing the technical and business feasibility of the next-generation of platinum-alloy catalysts for Application in PEM fuel cells (PEMFCs). During the project, a scalable ‘Minimum viable product’ catalyst has been developed and its performance demonstrated under PEMFC operational conditions with both companies as well as public research organisations – thus, validated the effectiveness of StableCat catalyst technology. During the project, spin-out ReCatalyst also officially launched their first product, successfully reaching first validations with the industry. Furthermore, National Institute of Chemistry and the spin-out ReCatalyst signed an Exclusive licensing agreement, successfully transferring the IP relevant for commercialization to the company. This was also followed by entering of the national phases with the patent applications. In addition, ReCatalyst's team participated at many domestic as well as international competitions. Namely, the team was shortlisted as one of the finalists of the Royal Society of Chemistry Emerging Technologies, one of the finalists for the Best Entrepreneurial Idea competition issued by domestic newspaper Finance, achieved top 10 in the 2022 Energy Tech Challengers in the Hydrogen section, shortlisted for the Tech Tour European Hydrogen Industry Roundtable as well as invited for the Tech Tour’s flagship event Sustainability22, has won the BASF Innovation Hub award 2021 as well as were one of the winners of the Falling Walls Ventures 2021. Most importantly, spin-out ReCatalyst has been recently successfully selected by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency for the ∼2.5M € EIC Transition call. In addition to that, ReCatalyst with Project ENABLER was among the only four highlighted projects from the 2nd 2022 cut-off.