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Halifax, Nova Scotia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 28, 2019) - ELCORA ADVANCED MATERIALS CORP. (TSXV: ERA) (FSE: ELM) (OTC: ECORF) (the "Company" or "Elcora") is pleased to announce that it has been awarded an NSERC-ENGAGE grant with Associate Professor Dr. Heather Andreas 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. Dr. Andreas has expertise in:
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Evaluating supercapacitor materials
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Graphene
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Understanding charge movement/redistribution
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Surface functional groups
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Carbon reactivity during charge/discharge
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The effect of impurities
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Modifying carbon materials to achieve desired supercapacitor performance
The super capacitor market is expected to reach 2.18 Billion USD by 2022 at a CAGR of 20.7 % between 2016 and 2022 (https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/supercapacitor-market-worth-218-billion-usd-by-2022-2016-11-28). Factors such as high storage capabilities, need of power conservation, high performance supercapacitors for consumer and automotive applications, and additional capabilities such as moisture resistant, light weight and low equivalent series resistance are the key drivers for the supercapacitor market (https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/supercapacitor.asp).
Elcora Advanced Materials has identified supercapacitors (SCs) as an important future application for graphite materials. Supercapacitors are energy storage systems (like batteries) that are typically used in applications where an almost instantaneous response is required (e.g. camera flashes, air-bag deployment, defibrillators AED's and airplane emergency chutes). 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. The common misconception is that carbon is a simple material and all carbons behave similarly - in fact, 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 ideally suited to study and optimize Elcora's graphite-based products for supercapacitor applications.
According to Troy Grant, Chief Executive Officer, "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."