Elcogen is a manufacturer of clean energy technology that delivers affordable green hydrogen and emission-free electricity. It is leader company in solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) technology applied to a broad range applications. 

Within BEST4Hy Elcogen has a strict collaboration with the Politecnico di Torino to work on SOFC’s recycling. How did you contribute to the first steps of the research?

Cannot say that it is a strict collaboration. It is more like win-win cooperation between our entities. Elcogen supports POLITO in industrial requirements, materials, end-of-life and scrap products for testing and the results evaluation. POLITO, from their side, has needed knowledge and equipment to work on innovative recycling techniques, to find the best way to remanufacture the powders for its reuse back to solid oxide cell production or for other stakeholders in case of an open-loop approach.

Elcogen stack

Elcogen Cell

This is the time for the the re-manufacturing phase. What are the results achieved until now? Challenges ad steps forward?

Up to now, POLITO could prepare a batch of processed cell material from scrap production cells, and it has been already tested and validated in the industrial Elcogen environment with around 30% of recycled powders in new cells. The preliminary results showed a great potential for this approach, without really a visible difference between pristine and recycled materials. Now, Elcogen is considering different possibilities to industrialise the recycling of scrap cell materials in production, on a larger scale, to be implemented later, outside of the Best4Hy project.

Concerning the end-of-life cell materials, POLITO is on its way to prepare the needed amount of powders for Elcogen to try a similar approach, with around 30% of recycled EoL powders in cell. When the powders are received, Elcogen will proceed with manufacturing of cells based on those materials and their full physico-chemical and electrochemical characterisation, to compare it to a standard product.

Elcogen, as industry representative, is bringing added value to the project. What are the major lessons learned from your perspective? Also, what is the perspective from the hydrogen industry network, do you think there is interest in the topic of sustainability of FCH, particularly with regards to EoL?

The project is extremely interesting to Elcogen as it shows the possibilites to recycle the cell materials from scrap and EoL products, and to evaluate not only the technical side of the recycling but also its economical part. Some of the results will be considered to be implemented in the Elcogen factory, as a part of zero-waste production approach. Some other processes like EoL cell recycling might be as another step to consider, potentially for other stakeholders active in the recycling business. In overall, there is a clear need to have methods for the solid oxide products to be recycled in near future, when the volumes are expected to grow exponentially not only for Elcogen, but for other players as well, creating a lot of high-value wastes that need to be recycled within the EU economy, taking into account criticality of some of those elements.

In conclusion, the project allowed to Elcogen to get useful information for recycling of scrap manufacturing product after sintering. Also, the project will give a full picture about the feasibility of end-of-life cells recycling, that will be a big source of high-value waste already by the end of the decade.

As next steps, Elcogen expects to work in this direction after the project completion, to investigate the possibility to implement the project results in its factory. Also, Elcogen expects to have a continuation of such EU-funded activities in other similar projects with a possibility to investigate recycling of next level products like stacks and stack modules.