Smoltek Hydro­gen, a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of the Smoltek Group, has devel­oped a cell mate­r­i­al that can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the amount of irid­i­um in an elec­trolyz­er cell, which has res­onat­ed around the world. Among oth­er things, one of the world’s largest vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers has reached out to get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to test the cell mate­r­i­al.
 
In the col­lab­o­ra­tion that the two com­pa­nies have entered, the vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­er is very inter­est­ed in the unique con­struc­tion, and in this ini­tial project, Smoltek Hydro­gen has deliv­ered a spe­cial­ly man­u­fac­tured and cus­tomized cell mate­r­i­al for test­ing and evaluation.

We have man­u­fac­tured pro­to­types where car­bon nanofibers were first coat­ed with plat­inum, and then applied irid­i­um accord­ing to the cus­tomer’s requests. It has tak­en time to fig­ure out exact­ly how to con­fig­ure the pro­to­types, so that they can also be test­ed in their lab­o­ra­to­ry, but now they have just start­ed test­ing the pro­to­types to see if they meet their requirements.

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg, Pres­i­dent of Smoltek Hydrogen

If the test turns out well, we think this cus­tomer wants to start a larg­er project because they have big plans to use their fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy to also devel­op elec­trolyz­ers, and there seems to be no oth­er solu­tion to the irid­i­um prob­lem than the tech­nol­o­gy we have developed.

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg continues

The pro­to­types are based on Smoltek’s unique and patent-pro­tect­ed car­bon nan­otech­nol­o­gy, where the objec­tive is to reduce the irid­i­um load in the anode elec­trode in elec­trolyz­er cells by 95% (which cor­re­sponds to 0.1 mg iridium/​cm²), com­pared to today’s com­mer­cial mate­ri­als (which use 2.0 mg iridium/​cm²). Smoltek Hydro­gen has already proven in long-term tests that the com­pa­ny’s cell mate­r­i­al can pro­duce the same amount of hydro­gen at only 0.2 mg iridium/​cm², which makes it hope­ful of reach­ing the final goal of 0.1 mg iridium/​cm².

The project with this cus­tomer has its back­ground in the pre­sen­ta­tions of the tech­nol­o­gy that Smoltek Hydro­gen car­ried out dur­ing the Elec­tro­chem­i­cal Soci­ety meet­ing in Gothen­burg last fall, and next week we will present updat­ed results at the 245th ECS meet­ing, which will be held in San Francisco.

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg concludes

Fact box: Smoltek Hydro­gen’s cell mate­r­i­al
Smoltek Hydro­gen is devel­op­ing a ver­ti­cal nanofiber-based mate­r­i­al for the anode porous trans­port lay­er (PTL) in PEM elec­trolyz­er cells. The mate­r­i­al con­sists of a sin­tered porous tita­ni­um lay­er with nanofibers, a con­for­mal plat­inum cor­ro­sion pro­tec­tion and irid­i­um cat­a­lyst (a thin nanopar­ti­cle lay­er of irid­i­um). The mate­r­i­al is one of the lay­ers in an elec­trolyz­er cell. When man­u­fac­tur­ing elec­trolyz­ers, a large num­ber of elec­trolyz­er cells are assem­bled into a cell stack, which is the main ele­ment in the elec­trolyz­er as it is where the elec­trol­y­sis takes place and hydro­gen is produced.