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Pempire-Wiki

PEMPIRE is a Horizon Europe project developing nextgeneration proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers with improved performance, durability and sustainability. It is needed because the largescale deployment of PEM electrolysis is still limited by high costs, reliance on critical raw materials and insufficient lifetime under real operating conditions. PEMPIRE addresses these barriers to support the industrial rollout of clean hydrogen technologies.

PEMPIRE targets key technical and systemic challenges of PEM electrolysis, including high dependency on scarce precious metals, limited longterm stability, performance degradation under dynamic operation, and difficulties in scaling laboratory innovations to industrial systems. The project takes a holistic approach, covering materials, components, stacks, balance of plant and system operation.

Unlike many projects focusing on individual components, PEMPIRE integrates the entire PEM electrolyser value chain—from catalyst and membrane development to stack design, balance of plant optimisation, digital modelling and sustainability assessment. The strong involvement of industrial partners ensures early validation, scalability and high industrial relevance of the results.

PEMPIRE goes beyond the state of the art by combining ultralowiridium materials, advanced component interfaces, physicsinformed degradation and lifetime modelling, and prospective technoeconomic and lifecycle assessments. The project validates these innovations up to TRL 6 under realistic operating conditions, paving the way for durable, costcompetitive and circular PEM electrolysers beyond 2030 targets.