What Drives the Price — and How to Choose the Right Material
When selecting carbon supports for PEM fuel cells, engineers often encounter a wide spread in pricing among materials that are all labeled mesoporous carbon.
For example, Ketjenblack, Toyo Tanso’s CNovel™, and Momentum Materials’ NCP Supports™ and MCP are all mesoporous by definition, yet their prices, performance, and durability differ substantially.
This article explains where those cost differences come from, how they relate to performance and durability, and why the right mesoporous carbon depends on how cost is defined for a given application.
Mesoporous Carbon: Same Classification, Different Engineering Priorities
Mesoporous carbon is defined as porous carbon containing pores in the 2–50 nm range. Under this definition, all of the following qualify:
However, in fuel cell applications, classification alone is not sufficient to predict behavior. What matters is:
- Pore size distribution (narrow vs wide)
- Specific surface area
- Long-term performance
Two mesoporous carbons can share a similar specific surface area yet perform very differently over time.
Where the Price Differences Come From (A Factual View)
Higher-priced mesoporous carbons such as CNovel™, NCP Supports™, and MCP are produced using templating or structure-directed synthesis routes. Their higher cost comes from both manufacturing realities and the resulting benefits to fuel cell stacks:
Key cost drivers include:
- Higher-cost raw materials, including sacrificial templates
- Precise control of pore size distribution, which enhances catalyst utilization while reducing batch-to-batch performance variability
- Post-treatments, such as high-temperature heat treatment, to improve carbon corrosion resistance and electrical conductivity
- Particle size control, through grinding and measurement, to ensure ink quality repeatability
In contrast, high–surface area carbon blacks such as Ketjenblack are produced via high-throughput furnace processes, which are optimized for volume and cost efficiency.
These different production routes naturally lead to different price points.
Surface Area and Pore Structure: Why “Mesoporous” Still Varies
| Material | BET Surface Area (m²/g) | Pore Size Distribution |
| Ketjenblack EC-600JD | 1200–1400 | Wide (2–20 nm) |
| CNovel™ MH-18 | ~1350 | Narrow (~4 nm) |
| MCP-4-HT | 800–1200 | Narrow (~4 nm) |
| NCP-10-HT | ~400 | Narrow (~10 nm) |
High surface area generally favors high initial catalyst dispersion, which is why carbon blacks often perform very well at beginning-of-life.
However, wide pore distributions can cause non-uniform mass transport, ionomer distribution, and catalyst dispersion, increasing uncertainty in fuel cell performance.
Initial Performance vs Durability: Two Different Optimization Targets
Initial mass activity is often used as a screening metric for fuel cell catalyst supports:
- Ketjenblack frequently shows strong beginning-of-life performance due to its high specific surface area and decades of optimization as a fuel cell catalyst support.
- CNovel™ and MCP can reach comparable initial activity, also enabled by high specific surface area, while offering further room for optimization toward improved and more repeatable performance through narrow pore size distributions and well-controlled carbon properties.
- NCP, by contrast, may show lower initial activity, a result of lower BET surface area due to deliberately thicker carbon walls.
This difference in initial mass activity, however, does not directly translate into long-term performance. While high–surface-area catalyst supports tend to favor higher mass activity, high surface area alone does not guarantee durability.
Durability instead depends on how mesopores confine catalyst particles and how carbon structures resist corrosion during operation. Carbon corrosion resistance is closely related to graphitic carbon crystallite thickness (Lc(002)): thicker carbon walls generally improve resistance to corrosion. Porous carbon materials face a trade-off between specific surface area and wall thickness, and therefore between initial performance and durability.
Fuel cells rarely fail at beginning-of-life. They fail after extended operations, where catalyst degradation and carbon corrosion become dominant. For this reason, optimizing catalyst supports requires balancing early-stage activity with long-term structural stability, rather than maximizing either metric in isolation.
Durability and Total Cost of Ownership
| Performance retention at 1 A/cm² after carbon durability testing* | |||
| Carbon Support | BOL | 1000 cycles | 5000 cycles |
| Ketjenblack EC-600JD ** | 100% | 0 | |
| CNovel™ MH-18 ** | 100% | ~90% | |
| NCP-10-HT *** | 100% | ~90% | |
* Accelerated carbon durability testing conducted between 1.0 and 1.5 V. Blank cells indicate that data are not available.
** Data estimated from Figure 12 in Hideo Daimon et al., 2025, J. Electrochem. Soc., 172, 034503. We used the best performed MH-18 data (HT@2400 °C) for the durability estimation.
*** NCP-10-HT data based on Momentum Materials customer feedback.
Carbon durability testing highlights where intentionally designed mesoporous carbons may offer economic advantages:
- Ketjenblack EC-600JD: faster carbon corrosion under high potential cycling
- CNovel™ MH-18: significantly improved durability vs carbon black
- NCP-10-HT: very high performance retention after extended accelerated durability cycling
While materials like CNovel™ and NCP Supports™ carry a higher upfront material cost ($/kg), their improved durability can translate into:
- Reduced platinum loss
- Lower maintenance cost due to fewer stack replacements
In many fuel cell systems, this results in a lower total cost of ownership, even if the $/kg price is higher.
For example, when platinum costs ~$80/g, using a $0.1/g carbon support that delivers good initial performance but loses catalyst activity after 500 hours can be far more expensive than using a $10/g carbon support that protects the catalyst for over 5,000 hours. In practice, this can avoid more than ten stack component replacements and the associated material and catalyst recycling costs.
Cost Depends on the Metric You Care About
Different customers evaluate cost differently:
- $/kg matters for cost-sensitive programs
- $/kW matters when Pt utilization and performance retention dominate
- $/hour or $/year matters for long-lifetime stationary or heavy-duty systems
Low-cost mesoporous carbon can be the right choice when upfront material cost is the primary constraint.
Higher-cost, durability-focused mesoporous carbon can be the better choice when lifetime economics dominate.
Neither approach is inherently superior — they serve different optimization goals.
How to Choose Mesoporous Carbon for Fuel Cells
Rather than asking “Which mesoporous carbon is best?”, a more useful question is:
- What lifetime is required?
- How sensitive is the system to Pt loss?
- Is cost constrained by $/kg or by system replacement frequency?
Answering these questions typically leads to a clearer, application-specific choice between carbon black, engineered mesoporous carbons, or alternatives.
Conclusion
Ketjenblack, CNovel™, NCP Supports™ and MCP are all mesoporous carbons, but they are engineered using different design priorities and manufacturing routes.
Higher price reflects manufacturing complexity and structural control, and resulting benefits from the control.
At the same time, higher upfront cost does not necessarily imply higher total cost of ownership.
For fuel cell developers, the most economical mesoporous carbon is ultimately the one that best aligns with performance targets, durability requirements, and how cost is measured in their specific system.