Zenyatta Ventures and Ballard Power Systems Announce Progress Report

Zenyatta Ventures Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:ZEN) and Ballard Power Systems Inc. (TSX: BLD) (NASDAQ: BLDP) have announced a progress report using high purity Albany graphite in the membrane electrode assembly (“MEA”) of a fuel cell.
According to the press release:

The MEA, which includes the gas diffusion layer (“GDL”), is a critical component of a Proton Exchange Membrane (“PEM”) fuel cell that must meet exacting performance standards for the fuel cell to perform properly.
Ballard recently prototyped GDLs with Albany graphite samples provided by Zenyatta. Ballard also made GDLs with benchmark (synthetic) graphite material currently in use today. Both GDLs were constructed using Ballard’s proprietary process to ensure a fair comparison. To date, all the properties of the GDL sample made with Zenyatta graphite were essentially identical to those of the benchmark GDL in all the functional tests that have been completed.
Bharat Chahar, VP Market Development, Zenyatta noted that, “These comparative test results continue to prove out the suitability of Albany graphite in demanding applications where exacting performance standards must be met for critical components. The fuel cell end-users need thousands of hours of trouble free operations during which the components of fuel cell stacks are exposed to a highly corrosive environment. We are extremely pleased to see the progress Ballard is making in proving the viability of Albany graphite in this demanding application. It is important to note that the material being tested by Ballard was ‘run-of-the-lab’ Albany graphite material produced with no special processing or customization for these tests.”
The GDL samples made by Ballard will be incorporated into a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) and will be tested in a fuel cell stack to characterize baseline fuel cell performance. This will further test the viability of Albany graphite in realistic fuel cell operating environments.
Dr. Rajesh Bashyam, Senior Research Scientist, R&D for Ballard commented, “This is another significant step in the process of qualifying Zenyatta’s Albany graphite for existing fuel cell markets such as back-up power and materials handling. We are extremely pleased to be working with a new graphite material that may potentially give Ballard Power Systems a competitive advantage in the area of fuel cell sub-components.”

Click here to read the full press release.