ITU Researchers will Lead the Turkish Team for the LEAP-SE Supported BioHyPEM Project

The ITU team will develop PEM fuel cells and green hydrogen electrolyzers with bio-based membranes in the LEAP-SE project with the International Consortium.

Istanbul Technical University will be a partner in the BioHyPEM Project, which will be supported under the LEAP-SE (Long-Term Joint EU-AU Research and Innovation Partnership on Sustainable Energy) call, targeting European and African collaborations in the field of sustainable energy.

In the project named "Bio-Based Membranes and Catalysts for High Performance PEM Fuel Cells and Green Hydrogen Electrolyzers (BioHyPEM)", with a total budget of €1 million, the following organizations and countries are included in addition to Istanbul Technical University (ITU):

CRTEn - The Research and Technologies Centre of Energy (Tunisia) (Coordinator)

EPRI - Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute (Egypt)

(CNRS UPC) - Université Paris Cité, UMR 7086 (France)

(CNRS-UPEC) – University Paris-East Créteil, UMR 7182 (France)

(UTT) - University of Technology of Troyes (France)

(CNR-ITAE) - Institute of Advanced Technologies for Energy (Italy)

(NOVA FCT) - The NOVA School of Science and Technology (Portugal)

Chitelix (Tunisia)

BECOME Institute (France)

In the BioHyPEM project, chitosan—a renewable polysaccharide to be developed by the project partners—will be chemically modified with poly (vinyl alcohol) (OPVA) to create a proton exchange membrane (PEM). The ITU team will demonstrate and validate the technology through a PEM fuel cell and electrolyzer stack at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5.

The project’s Turkish team consists of three academics from Istanbul Technical University.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. M. Suha Yazıcı – ITU Energy Institute (Principal Investigator)

Prof. Dr. Alper Sarıoğlan – ITU Department of Chemical Engineering

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aytekin Uzunoğlu – ITU Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering