Electrolyzers

With our car­bon nan­ote­chol­o­gy plat­form as a base, we devel­op mate­r­i­al solu­tions for use in the hydro­gen indus­try. Like a coat­ed nanos­truc­ture that acts as a scaf­fold for irid­i­um catalysts. 

Cur­rent­ly, we focus on improv­ing the elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell in PEM elec­trolyz­ers and fuel cells. The cell enables the con­ver­sion of elec­tric­i­ty into hydro­gen and vice ver­sa. Thus, it’s a key com­po­nent in stor­ing and trans­mit­ting renew­able ener­gy and decar­boniz­ing indus­try, trans­porta­tion, and heating.

Today’s PEM elec­trolyz­ers use cost­ly cat­a­lyst par­ti­cles which, in con­tact with the mem­brane, enable hydro­gen to be formed. These cat­a­lyst par­ti­cles are usu­al­ly irid­i­um or plat­inum. In tra­di­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy, these cat­a­lyst par­ti­cles are mixed in a slur­ry that is applied on the plas­tic mem­brane. How­ev­er, the method (called CCM) is inef­fi­cient as not all cat­a­lyst par­ti­cles come in con­tact with the membrane.

Smoltek’s unique tech­nol­o­gy uses coat­ed (cor­ro­sion pro­tect­ed) car­bon nanofibers (CNFs) as cat­a­lyst sup­port applied direct­ly on the PTL sub­strate (a method called CCS), mak­ing all the extreme­ly expen­sive irid­i­um cat­a­lysts come in full con­tact with the MEA. We call this Smoltek PTE* (porous trans­port elec­trode). The result is that the need for irid­i­um par­ti­cles can decrease rad­i­cal­ly – we have already showed that our PTE can pro­duce the same amount of hydro­gen with only 0.1−0.2 mg iridium/​cm2 as a con­ven­tion­al cell that uses 2.0−2.5 mg iridium/​cm2.

Our break­through innovation—Smoltek PTE—also increas­es the active sur­face area by 30 times and enhances the cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty in the elec­tro­chem­i­cal PEM cell. 

So, do you want to reduce the amount of irid­i­um par­ti­cles (and still pro­duce the same amount of fos­sil-free hydro­gen), or do you want to reduce the size of the cell area in the elec­trolyz­er, thus get­ting a small­er and cheap­er electrolyzer?

* The Smoltek PTE com­bines the anode PTL with cat­a­lyst, thus reduc­ing the MEA lay­er to just ½ MEA. As seen in the dif­fer­ent zoom-ins, the porous PTL is filled with car­bon nanofibers (CNFs) that pen­e­trate the ½ MEA, enabling all of the irid­i­um cat­a­lysts to make con­tact with the MEA.

Advantages of Smoltek’s highly efficient PTE

Smoltek’s tech­nol­o­gy offers a solu­tion to this prob­lem. It enables the man­u­fac­ture of a new and more effi­cient PTE for PEM elec­trolyz­ers based on our patent pro­tect­ed car­bon nan­otech­nol­o­gy that cre­ates a three-dimen­sion­al sur­face struc­ture on the anode side’s PTL layer.

The tech­nol­o­gy enables all irid­i­um cat­a­lyst par­ti­cles to come into con­tact with the mem­brane, thanks to the fact the par­ti­cles are deposit­ed on the nanos­truc­ture which is direct­ly in con­tact with the metal­lic PTL sur­face. There­by, the expen­sive cat­a­lyst par­ti­cles are ful­ly uti­lized; thus, the irid­i­um cat­a­lyst load in the cell can be reduced by up to 95 per­cent. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant as the sup­ply of irid­i­um and plat­inum are con­sid­ered crit­i­cal, i.e. the future demand for these mate­ri­als can­not be met with cer­tain­ty, and the reduced sup­ply risks lead to increased pro­duc­tion costs for green hydro­gen further.

Smoltek’s nanos­truc­ture also increas­es the sur­face area of the elec­trode (the one in con­tact with the mem­brane). This means that more par­ti­cles can be placed on a giv­en sur­face, which in turn can reduce the elec­trolyz­er in size by two to three times while main­tain­ing capac­i­ty. A reduced-size means, among oth­er things, small­er invest­ments and low­er main­te­nance and mate­r­i­al costs.

Learn more

Read more about our elec­trolyz­er cell mate­r­i­al tech­nol­o­gy in the whitepa­per Intro­duc­ing Smoltek Elec­trolyz­er Tech­nol­o­gy.

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