Smoltek patent No. 83 now granted – the first in a new family

Elec­tro Cata­lyst Heat­ing is a new pat­ent fam­ily in our IP port­fo­lio, and it describes nov­el designs for heat man­age­ment in elec­tro­lys­is cells. It uses the prop­er­ties of the cell to feed elec­tro­mag­net­ic energy which is con­ver­ted to heat at the cata­lyst layer.

ith this new pat­ent fam­ily, we are strength­en­ing the scope our IP port­fo­lio with­in the field of green hydro­gen pro­duc­tion using PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers. The inven­tion allows to sus­tain lar­ger tem­per­at­ure gradi­ents in a cell such that parts which oth­er­wise eas­ily cor­rode like bipolar plates can oper­ate at more benign tem­per­at­ures. Basic­ally the heat is con­cen­trated to the cata­lyst lay­er, where it is of use.

Fabi­an Wenger, Head of R&D at Smol­tek Hydrogen

Innov­a­tion descrip­tion of the Elec­tro Cata­lyst Heat­ing pat­ent fam­ily
The Innov­a­tion in brief: An elec­tro­lyz­er com­pris­ing a heat­ing appar­at­us oper­ated by propagat­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields.  
 
From the pub­lished abstract: An elec­tro­lyz­er com­pris­ing a first and a second elec­trode and an ion exchange mem­brane arranged in-between the first and the second elec­trode, where each elec­trode com­prises a con­duct­ive ele­ment. At least one of the elec­trodes com­prises a cata­lyst struc­ture, the cata­lyst struc­ture com­pris­ing an elec­tric­ally con­duct­ive mater­i­al.
The elec­tro­lyz­er also com­prises at least one feed­ing means, wherein the feed­ing means is arranged to intro­duce a viable elec­tro­mag­net­ic field. The vari­able elec­tro­mag­net­ic field is arranged into the elec­tro­lyz­er with the pur­pose to cre­ate a tem­per­at­ure gradi­ent in the elec­tro­lyz­er by increas­ing a tem­per­at­ure of the cata­lyst structure.

Smoltek’s pat­ent port­fo­lio now glob­ally com­prises 83 gran­ted pat­ents. Read more about our IP and pat­ents.