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Ellinor Ehrnberg, President Smoltek Hydrogen

Revolutionizing electrolyzer technology to meet future needs for cost-effective hydrogen

Hydrogen will play a key role in a number of industries, not least in providing the industries with so-called "green electricity", as part of Europe's energy transition to climate neutrality. But someone must also produce the huge amounts of hydrogen that will be required to meet the growing needs. At the moment Smoltek Innovation AB is testing its carbon nanofiber based technology, which may drastically increase productivity in hydrogen production at a lower cost than current technology.

April 15, 2021

“A grow­ing new area that we are look­ing at right now is tech­nol­o­gy for ener­gy con­ver­sion, specif­i­cal­ly elec­trolyz­ers for hydro­gen-based ener­gy sys­tems, where we have already filed sev­er­al patent appli­ca­tions,” says Elli­nor Ehrn­berg, head of Smoltek Innovation.

Dis­trib­uted hydro­gen pro­duc­tion will play a sig­nif­i­cant role in the future, includ­ing as an infra­struc­ture com­po­nent for heavy vehi­cles that in the future will be pow­ered by fuel cells, as well as in fos­sil-free steel pro­duc­tion, where sev­er­al Swedish projects are cur­rent­ly under­way. More and more play­ers are review­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of stor­ing ener­gy when oth­er renew­able ener­gy sources such as solar, wind and water do not deliver.

The Swedish Ener­gy Agency has, on behalf of the gov­ern­ment, devel­oped a nation­al hydro­gen strat­e­gy to facil­i­tate the tran­si­tion to fossil-free.

“There are many that are talk­ing about stor­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing hydro­gen, but few are inter­est­ed in mod­ern­iz­ing the pro­duc­tion technology,”

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg continues.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is Pro­ton Exchange Mem­brane (PEM) elec­trol­y­sis where the cells con­tain a water-absorb­ing elec­trolyte of a poly­mer mem­brane. Expen­sive met­als such as plat­inum or irid­i­um are used as cat­a­lyst mate­ri­als, but these par­ti­cles are placed ran­dom­ly and part­ly hid­den in cur­rent PEM cells. Smoltek’s tech­nol­o­gy enables these expen­sive par­ti­cles to be orga­nized to come into full con­tact with the mem­brane and thus reach­es full hydro­gen pro­duc­tion with a less­er amount of expen­sive metals.

“Our tech­nol­o­gy should be able to pro­duce two to three times more hydro­gen per cell com­pared to exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy. This is because two to three times more cat­a­lyst par­ti­cles can be in con­tact with the mem­brane at the same time.”

“It is all based on the fact that our tech­nol­o­gy can grow the nanos­truc­tures in a way that gives a ver­ti­cal 3D effect, which opti­mizes the func­tion­al sur­face lay­er. This makes our tech­nol­o­gy both eco­nom­i­callay and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sustainable.”

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg explains.

In the auto­mo­tive indus­try, it is said that per­haps 20 per­cent of the elec­tric cars of the future will not be pow­ered by bat­ter­ies, but fuel cells. Espe­cial­ly in heavy trans­ports, as the hydro­gen reduces weight per stored ener­gy, which makes it more suit­able than a bat­tery when you need a longer range. Elli­nor Ehrn­berg exem­pli­fies with the Vol­vo Group, which recent­ly formed a joint ven­ture with Daim­ler Truck AG for large-scale pro­duc­tion of fuel cells.

“This is very much some­thing that is on the rise. The same applies, of course, to the marine and aero­space indus­tries, where they also want to invest in sus­tain­able, ener­gy- dense alter­na­tives, which are suit­able for long dis­tances and which can be stored direct­ly in vehi­cles with­out sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­ing weight,”

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg concludes.

Smoltek is still in an ear­ly research phase, Proof of con­cept, to demon­strate the fea­si­bil­i­ty of the tech­nol­o­gy, but since the con­cept is so promis­ing and the poten­tial mar­ket is so large, the com­pa­ny wants to act quick­ly and is now look­ing for part­ners with whom they want to real­ize the new elec­trolyz­er concept.

Image: Elli­nor Ehrn­berg, Pres­i­dent at Smoltek Innovation

This con­tent is trans­lat­ed from an edi­to­r­i­al ad in Ny Teknik, April 15 2021.

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