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Toward Low Loading and High Utilization Ratio of Iridium Catalyst for PEM Water Electrolyzers Using Smoltek Carbon Nanofibers

Research paper published in the proceedings at EFCF 2023 in Lucerne, Switzerland. Presentation made by Xin Wen, PhD.

Q Li, F Wenger, Ellinor Ehrnberg, X Wen, B Penninckx, J Sanchez • August 20, 2023

Smoltek address­es the hydro­gen indus­try’s main chal­lenges for enabling cost-effi­cient pro­duc­tion of fos­sil-free hydro­gen by dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduc­ing the cost of PEM water electrolyzers. 

  • By focus­ing on:
  • Anode side cat­a­lyst is expensive.
  • Good elec­tri­cal con­duc­tiv­i­ty is important.
  • We can:
  • Increase anode sur­face area by Smoltek CNFs.
  • Low­er Ir load­ing amount to ≤0.2 mg Ir/​cm2.
  • We do this by grow CNFs on anode PTLs:
  • Cre­at­ing a Cat­a­lyst coat­ed PTL substrate
  • Where the CNFs increase sur­face area (CNF length can be con­trolled from 1 to 30 Âµm)
  • Cor­ro­sion pro­tec­tion: CNFs cov­ered with a 50 nm Pt lay­er and an elec­trode­posit­ed Ir layer
  • This results in:
  • Con­trolled Ir load­ing by our own depo­si­tion process
  • Decrease Ir cat­a­lyst load­ing to as low as 0.1 mgIr/​cm2
  • Per­for­mance is bet­ter than com­mer­cial Ir cat­a­lyst ink

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