Smoltek patent No. 80 now granted – the first in a new family targeting the green hydrogen industry

The Elec­tro Cata­lyst Sup­port is the first pat­ent of a new pat­ent fam­ily regard­ing how to use Smol­tek’s core tech­no­logy in elec­tro­chem­ic­al cells. In this case – how we can use the tech­no­logy to rad­ic­ally decrease the amount of iridi­um cata­lyst load in PEM water elec­tro­lyz­er cells as well as increase the out­put per area of the cell.

With this new pat­ent fam­ily Smol­tek expands its IP port­fo­lio to include the field of green hydro­gen pro­duc­tion. This is a break­through for us as we now can be a key sup­pli­er of tech­nic­al solu­tions that enable the hydro­gen industry to scale up the pro­duc­tion of PEM electrolyzers.

Fabi­an Wenger, Head of R&D at Smol­tek Hydrogen

The Elec­tro Cata­lyst Sup­port pat­ent fam­ily is cov­er­ing an elec­tro­lyz­er and a meth­od for pro­du­cing a cata­lyst sup­por­ted on a nano­struc­ture. The innov­a­tion relates to devices used in elec­tro­lys­is, par­tic­u­larly for the elec­tro­lys­is of water, a way of pro­du­cing hydro­gen gas without fossil fuels. It provides means of con­vert­ing excess elec­tric­al energy from inter­mit­tent energy sources, such as wind and sol­ar power to chem­ic­al energy for stor­age and later use.

The approved claims cov­er an elec­tro­lyz­er con­tain­ing elong­ated, ver­tic­ally ori­ented nano­struc­tures used to cre­ate a con­nec­tion between the cata­lyst particles on the pro­tec­ted nano­struc­ture and in con­tact with the mem­brane provid­ing con­duct­ing paths for both ions and elec­trons. The tech­no­logy is suit­able for nano­struc­tures that are at least par­tially covered by a pro­tect­ive lay­er designed to increase res­ist­ance to cor­ro­sion (i.e. so they are dur­able for use on the anode side of the PEM electrolyzer).

Smoltek’s pat­ent port­fo­lio now glob­ally com­prises 80 gran­ted pat­ents. Read more about our IP and pat­ents.