Nova Scotia-based Elcora Advanced Materials Corp. has been awarded a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)-ENGAGE grant with Dr. Heather Andreas, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Dalhousie University. The project will focus on studying Elcora’s high-quality graphene as an electrode material for supercapacitors.

Dr. Andreas has worked on carbon-based supercapacitors (SCs) for more than 14 years.

The supercapacitor market is forecast to reach US$2.18 billion by 2022 at a CAGR of 20.7% between 2016 and 2022. Factors such as high storage capabilities, need for power conservation, high performance supercapacitors for consumer and automotive applications, and additional capabilities such as moisture resistance, light weight and low equivalent series resistance are key drivers for supercapacitor market.

Elcora is a producer of high-quality carbon materials—specifically graphite and graphene—and has identified supercapacitors (SCs) as an important future application for graphite materials.

In SCs, the charge is stored on a carbon electrode—meaning SC performance is incredibly sensitive to the carbon’s morphology, chemistry, reactivity/stability and impurities.

A common misconception is that carbon is a simple material and all carbons behave similarly; however, carbon is incredibly complex and subtle changes in the pore size, structure, degree of graphitization, surface area, chemical environment, etc. can strongly impact carbon performance.

To understand graphene’s SC applicability requires knowledge of all these parameters and vitally how these parameters impact the performance. Dr. Andreas is suited to study and optimize Elcora’s graphite-based products for supercapacitor applications.

This announcement is great news for Elcora. The funding allows Elcora to collaborate with one of the worlds top researchers in how to understand and optimize graphene/graphite for supercapacitor applications. We expect to demonstrate that Elcora’s graphene and graphite-based products are ideally suited for supercapacitor applications. This research may help Elcora secure supply agreements for it’s high-quality graphene and graphite-based products.

—Troy Grant, CEO, Elcora

Elcora was founded in 2011 and has been structured to become a vertically integrated graphite & graphene company. Elcora processes, refines, and produces both graphite & graphene. As part of the vertical integration strategy Elcora is securing high-grade graphite and graphene precursor graphite from operations in Sri Lanka and other countries which are already in production.

Elcora has developed a cost-effective process to make high-quality graphite, graphite products and graphene that are commercially scalable.

Engage Grants are designed to give innovative companies that operate from a Canadian base access to the knowledge, expertise and capabilities available at Canadian universities and colleges. These grants are intended to foster the development of new research partnerships by supporting short-term research and development projects aimed at addressing a company-specific problem.

Following an Engage Grant, applicants may apply for follow-on support for an additional six months of related research activity through an Engage Plus grant, in order to further developments from an ongoing or recently completed Engage Grant project, or to continue the project while seeking longer-term support (through, for example, a Collaborative Research and Development Grant [CRD] or an Applied Research and Development Grant [ARD]).