In the report, Dr Felix N. Büchi – Group Leader of the Elec­tro­chem­istry Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Paul Scher­rer Insti­tute – con­firms that the elec­trode exhib­it state-of-the-art per­for­mance while using sig­nif­i­cant­ly less of the rare pre­cious met­al irid­i­um, which could lead to more cost-effec­tive pro­duc­tion of green hydrogen.

Smoltek’s elec­trodes are a very inter­est­ing devel­op­ment for the pro­duc­tion of low irid­i­um load­ing elec­trodes for PEM electrolyzers.

^{Dr Felix N. Büchi, writes in the report}

In a PEM elec­trol­yser, there is a thin mem­brane between the two elec­trodes. On the side where the oxy­gen is devel­oped (anode side) it is required to use irid­i­um as a cat­a­lyst. Irid­i­um is a rare and very expen­sive pre­cious met­al, and the price is expect­ed to rise to 700,000 euros per kg towards the end of this decade.

With con­ven­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy, up to 2.0 mg of irid­i­um per cm² is used today, which in 2030 cor­re­sponds to a cost of 35 mil­lion euros for a 100 MW elec­trolyz­er with a 2,500 m² mem­brane. Lead­ing com­peti­tors have man­aged to reduce the use to 0.5 mg per cm², which would entail a cost of close to 9 mil­lion euros for a 100 MW elec­trolyz­er at an irid­i­um price of 700,000 euros per kg.

How­ev­er, Smoltek has already reached down to 0.2 mg of irid­i­um per cm² with per­for­mance that Dr. Büchi describes as “match­es the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy” and is aim­ing for 0.1 mg per cm². This would reduce the cost of a 100 MW elec­trolyz­er to below 2 mil­lion euros.

Doc­tor Büchi’s pos­i­tive eval­u­a­tion con­firms that our tech­nol­o­gy can dras­ti­cal­ly reduce the use of irid­i­um in PEM elec­trolyz­ers. With a rapid­ly ris­ing irid­i­um price, our tech­nol­o­gy will be a key to cost-effec­tive pro­duc­tion of green hydrogen

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg, Pres­i­dent of Smoltek Hydrogen