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IMproved lifetiMe stacks fOR heavy duty Trucks
through ultrA-durabLe components

About IMMORTAL

Exceptionally durable and high power density MEAs

IMMORTAL will develop exceptionally durable and high power density MEAs well beyond the current state of the art up to TRL4 by building on understanding of fuel cell degradation pathways specific to heavy-duty truck operation and developing lifetime prediction models from extensive real-life stack operation, accelerated stress test and load profile cycles on short stacks.

Expertise in fuel cell science and technology

IMMORTAL encompasses OEMs, tier 1 suppliers, leading industrial and academic/research organisation partners with long expertise in fuel cell science and technology. Building on best developments from the FCH JU, the project will not only develop significantly more durable MEAs (transferable to other fields), but will accelerate competitiveness of the European fuel cell truck sector by providing recommendations at system level to improve durability, and designs that contribute to increasing stack power density and to reducing the PEMFC system cost.

IMMORTAL Objectives

Develop New Materials Concepts

Develop new materials concepts for world-leading components (electrocatalysts, membranes) by building mitigation strategies to fuel cell operation-induced degradation into their design to ensure both their activity and their stability, and improve the interfaces between them to minimise resistances.

Novel Electrode & MEA Constructions

Realise the potential of these components in MEAs by introducing novel electrode and MEA constructions to deliver a step change in durability while exceeding 1.2 W/cm² at 0.675 V.

Develop Load Profile Tests

Develop load profile tests for heavy-duty MEA performance and durability assessment, including input from real-life usage profiles from H2Haul.

Identify & Rank Degradation Mechanisms

Identify and rank critical degradation mechanisms using data from field and laboratory stack ageing tests, and accelerated ageing protocols.

Performance & Durability Full Cell Short Stacks

Validate the MEA performance and durability in full size cell short stacks using extended load profile testing and achieve a predicted lifetime of 30,000 hours.

IMMORTAL News

21 January 2024 - IMMORTAL Workshop

IMMORTAL will hold an online workshop on Thursday 28th March 2024 14.00 – 18.00 CET to present results from the project, and also provide the opportunity for other European and international projects dedicated to heavy duty vehicle fuel cells to give a short overview of their project status

18 May 2023 - IMMORTAL Publication

Structure Dynamics of Carbon-Supported Platinum-Neodymium Nanoalloys during the Oxygen Reduction Reaction, C. A. Campos-Roldán, et al., ACS Catal., 2023, 13, 11, 7417–7427

3 May 2023 - IMMORTAL 2nd newsletter

Not yet immortal… but approaching, thanks to the latest generation of reinforced membrane and catalyst layer developments with increased stability and improved fuel cell durability when subjected to exacting accelerated stress test protocols. A star highlight of recent months is that IMMORTAL's first heavy-duty specific membrane electrode assembly, already produced at a total active area of 20 m2, reaches Europe's 2024 performance target for heavy-duty trucks. The work ahead is to achieve that performance target – and improve on it – with even lower catalyst loading, and to reduce the voltage loss with time induced by load profile testing.

10 October 2022 - IMMORTAL 1st newsletter

Despite the pandemic, IMMORTAL has made excellent progress throughout its various work packages.

14 June 2022 - IMMORTAL Publication

Platinum-Rare Earth Alloy Electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction: A Brief Overview
C. A. Campos-Roldán, D. J. Jones, J. Rozière, and S. Cavaliere, ChemCatChem 2022, e202200334

4 April 2022 - IMMORTAL Publication

Nitrogen Plasma Modified Carbons for PEMFC with Increased Interaction with Catalyst and Ionomer
A. Parnière, P.-Y. Blanchard, S. Cavaliere, N. Donzel, B. Prelot, J. Rozière and D. J. Jones,
2022 J. Electrochem. Soc. 169 044502 - OPEN ACCESS

9 September 2021 - IMMORTAL brochure is available

The IMMORTAL consortium has released a brochure to present the project main objectives ...

More details

11 June 2021 - Second meeting IMMORTAL - H2HAUL

To foster information exchange and accelerate the take-up of technology, IMMORTAL and FCH JU project H2HAUL (Hydrogen fuel cell trucks for heavy-duty, zero emission logistics) have started a cooperation with a 2nd meeting held on 11th June 2021.

More details

27 May 2021 - International Discussions on Fuel Cells for Heavy Duty Applications

Meeting between DOE /M2FCT (USA), IMMORTAL & NEDO FC-Platform (Japan)

News ...

5 May 2021 - Fuel Cell Bulletin press release

CNRS press release published in the Fuel Cell Bulletin Issue 5, Volume 2021, May 2021, Page 15

3 May 2021 - H2Haul announced cooperation with IMMORTAL ...

H2Haul announced cooperation with IMMORTAL on their LinkedIn account ...

IMMORTAL Consortium


	Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Coordinator

Robert Bosch GmbH	Johnson Matthey Hydrogen Technologies Ltd	FPT Motorenforschung AG



AVL List GmbH	University of Freiburg, Engineering IMTEK	PRETEXO

This project has received funding from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking (now Clean Hydrogen Partnership) under grant agreement No 101006641.
This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program, Hydrogen Europe and Hydrogen Europe Research.