Technology

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.

Smoltek Hydrogen’s PTE (porous trans­port elec­trode) tech­nol­o­gy reduces irid­i­um usage by 95%, to just 0.1 mg/​cm², while main­tain­ing equiv­a­lent cur­rent den­si­ty and dura­bil­i­ty. Our nanofiber depo­si­tion process cre­ates a sur­face area that is 30 times larg­er, ensur­ing that near­ly all of the cat­a­lyst mate­r­i­al active­ly par­tic­i­pates in the reac­tion. This break­through elim­i­nates the irid­i­um scarci­ty that lim­its pro­duc­tion vol­umes and cost targets.

The Smoltek PTE* uses coat­ed (cor­ro­sion pro­tect­ed) car­bon nanofibers (CNFs) as cat­a­lyst sup­port applied direct­ly on the PTL sub­strate (a method called Cat­a­lyst Coat­ed Sub­strate, or CCS), mak­ing all the extreme­ly expen­sive irid­i­um cat­a­lysts come in full con­tact with the MEA. The result is that the need for irid­i­um par­ti­cles can decrease sig­nif­i­cant­ly – 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.

* 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.

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