Toray Industries, Inc. (Tokyo; www.toray.com) announced that its German subsidiary, Greenerity GmbH, held a groundbreaking ceremony a day earlier for its second plant. This will be in an industrial area of Alzenau, Bavaria, around 10 kilometers southwest of Hanau. That company develops, manufactures, and sells components for hydrogen fuel cells. The new facility is scheduled to go online in November 2021.
The new facility will install equipment to efficiently produce catalyst-coated membranes and membrane electrode assemblies, which are key components of hydrogen fuel cells. Once running at full capacity, the combined annual output of both offerings would be an estimated 10 million units.
Greenerity will position itself through the new plant to add capacity and thus cater to surging demand for catalyst-coated membranes and membrane electrode assemblies in the years ahead.
The Toray Group offers materials and components for hydrogen and fuel cell applications, such as high-strength carbon fiber, prepreg, liner resins with a good durability against hydrogen embrittlement for high-pressure hydrogen tanks, gas diffusion layers, catalyst layers, and hydrocarbon–based electrolyte membranes that have both good durability at elevated operation temperature and also low gas permeability ideal for hydrogen fuel cells as well as for water electrolysis and hydrogen compression applications.
In 2015, Toray acquired Greenerity for the latter’s catalyst coated membrane and membrane electrode assembly design technologies, combining them with related material technologies of its own to expand the businesses as a manufacturing and sales bases.
Toray will bolster its efforts in the years ahead through this relationship to contribute to creating low-carbon, hydrogen societies.