CHEMOURS BELGIUM

Their core work

Chemours Belgium is the European arm of The Chemours Company, a global specialty chemicals manufacturer best known for producing Nafion™ proton exchange membranes — the benchmark material enabling proton conduction in hydrogen fuel cells and water electrolyzers. In H2020 consortia, they contribute advanced fluoropolymer membrane materials and electrochemical component expertise to projects developing next-generation hydrogen technologies, acting as the industrial materials supplier that grounds academic innovation in commercially viable components. Their participation spans both energy conversion (PEM fuel cells) and green hydrogen production (PEM water electrolysis), reflecting their position as a critical materials enabler across the entire hydrogen value chain. By embedding in applied research projects, they simultaneously advance the performance of their materials and ensure emerging stack designs are built around supply-chain-ready components.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Chemours Belgium entered H2020 through DOLPHIN (2019) with a fuel-cell-stack orientation — thin membranes, graphene coatings, optimized flow fields, and novel bipolar plate architectures aimed at improving PEMFC performance at the component level. Their second project, PROMET-H2 (2020), marks a clear pivot toward water electrolysis: the keywords shift entirely to PEMWE stacks, power-to-hydrogen, power-to-methanol, and CRM-free catalysts, reflecting the surging industrial demand for green hydrogen production hardware. This trajectory mirrors the broader European hydrogen strategy pivot from mobility fuel cells toward large-scale electrolysis, and suggests Chemours is strategically repositioning its membrane portfolio to capture the electrolyzer market.

Chemours Belgium is moving toward PEM electrolyzer supply chains and CRM-free materials, making them a strong candidate for future consortia targeting industrial green hydrogen production and electrochemical decarbonization.

How they like to work

Chemours Belgium participates exclusively as a consortium partner — never as coordinator — which is consistent with a large industrial materials supplier that joins projects to validate and advance its product lines rather than to lead research agendas. Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 23 unique consortium partners across 9 countries, indicating large, multi-partner consortia typical of RIA-funded hydrogen technology projects. This pattern suggests they are sought-after specialists: brought in for their proprietary materials rather than for project management capacity.

With 23 unique partners across 9 countries from just two projects, Chemours Belgium operates within large, geographically diverse research consortia spanning multiple European member states. Their network density per project is high, reflecting the broad, multi-disciplinary nature of hydrogen stack development projects that require materials suppliers, system integrators, and academic partners simultaneously.

What sets them apart

Chemours Belgium brings proprietary fluoropolymer membrane technology — most notably Nafion™ — that academic partners and most SMEs cannot replicate or substitute in-house, making them an irreplaceable industrial anchor in any PEM hydrogen consortium. As the commercial membrane supplier embedded in applied research, they provide real-world performance benchmarks and de-risk the materials supply chain from lab prototype to scaled deployment. For consortium builders, their involvement signals industrial credibility and a direct pathway from research output to commercially available components.

Highlights from their portfolio

• PROMET-H2
  The largest funding award (EUR 327,500) and directly targets cost reduction in green hydrogen production via PEMWE stacks, placing Chemours at the center of Europe's industrial hydrogen scale-up agenda.
• DOLPHIN
  Despite modest funding (EUR 32,500), this project tackled disruptive fuel cell stack architecture with graphene-coated components and graded active layers — technically ambitious materials work across the full cell cross-section.