Advancing Electrochemical Efficiency

It’s easy to receive news that Smoltek has been grant­ed new patents with a shrug or a yawn. After all, such news comes along all the time. Usu­al­ly, it is a pre­vi­ous­ly known inno­va­tion that has been grant­ed a patent in yet anoth­er coun­try. The umpteenth in a row. This is, of course, good. But not nec­es­sar­i­ly some­thing to write home about. So you’re for­giv­en if you missed the bomb­shell: Smoltek has been grant­ed patents for three break­through inno­va­tions. We believe these inven­tions will make elec­trolyz­er and fuel cell man­u­fac­tur­ers crave our tech­nol­o­gy and know-how even more. Curi­ous? Read on!

Two challenges

The tran­si­tion to sus­tain­able ener­gy depends on the effi­cien­cy of elec­tro­chem­i­cal cells – the work­hors­es behind tech­nolo­gies such as fuel cells and elec­trolyz­ers. How­ev­er, these essen­tial com­po­nents face two prob­lems: high con­tact resis­tance and rapid corrosion.

High con­tact resis­tance leads to sig­nif­i­cant ener­gy loss­es, result­ing in reduced per­for­mance and increased oper­at­ing costs.

Cor­ro­sion erodes the struc­tur­al integri­ty of the elec­tro­chem­i­cal cells, caus­ing them to wear out quick­ly and require replacement.

All man­u­fac­tur­ers of fuel cells and elec­trolyz­ers want to tack­le these two chal­lenges. Bet­ter solu­tions are needed.

Guess who is sit­ting on them?

That’s right! Smoltek.

Our super-tal­ent­ed researchers and devel­op­ers have invent­ed not one but three solu­tions that work togeth­er to deal with these problems.

Three patents

Smoltek’s three patents form a for­mi­da­ble arse­nal against the dual chal­lenges of high con­tact resis­tance and cor­ro­sion, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant leap in elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell technology.

Patent SE545845 cov­ers an inno­va­tion we have giv­en the com­plete­ly unimag­i­na­tive name of ”a sep­a­ra­tor plate arrange­ment for an elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell com­pris­ing a nanos­truc­ture.” To avoid drop­ping dead of bore­dom when say­ing the name, we use the much sex­i­er unof­fi­cial name: Con­tact Resis­tance. This is a mis­nomer, as the inno­va­tion is not about con­tact resis­tance but coun­ter­act­ing it. As the offi­cial name sug­gests, this is accom­plished by arrang­ing the flow plates in an elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell in a cer­tain way. More about that later.

Patent SE545846 has a much cool­er name: Nano Vel­cro. Sure, it’s not the offi­cial name; it’s as dry as the paper the patent is writ­ten on: “Fuel cell or elec­trolyz­er with a con­nec­tive nanos­truc­ture.” More infor­ma­tion will fol­low on this as well. How­ev­er, you are cor­rect if you con­clude from the offi­cial name that it is also about reduc­ing con­tact resistance.

Patent SE545852 fol­lows and cov­ers also an inno­va­tion to low­er con­tact resis­tance. (Resis­tance is futile!). The offi­cial name does­n’t give much away: “A sep­a­ra­tor ele­ment with a coat­ing com­pris­ing nanos­truc­tures.” But our unof­fi­cial name is a bit more reveal­ing: Ver­ti­cal Graphene. It is sim­i­lar to the first patent, but uses ver­ti­cal graphene instead of car­bon nanofibers. We’ll get to what that means.

Are you ready to explore the patents a bit further?

Contact Resistance (SE545845)

An elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell is where the mag­ic hap­pens in elec­trolyz­ers (elec­tric­i­ty and water become hydro­gen and oxy­gen) and fuel cells (hydro­gen and oxy­gen become elec­tric­i­ty and water). Thus, it’s a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in many appli­ca­tions need­ed if we are to tran­si­tion from an ener­gy sys­tem with tons of car­bon emis­sions to a green and clean ener­gy system.

A mem­brane is at the very core of an elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell. PEM elec­trolyz­ers and fuel cells use a mem­brane that lets pro­tons through but blocks elec­trons, forc­ing them to detour through wires. This is what makes the mag­ic possible.

How­ev­er, to work, elec­tri­cal con­tact between an elec­trode and the sur­face of the mem­brane is required. How hard can it be? Just press an elec­trode against the mem­brane, and it’s done.

Or is it?

Of course, it is not that sim­ple. A lot of water and hydro­gen gas must also fit in the inter­face between the elec­trode and the mem­brane, and if you cre­ate some space for it, the elec­tri­cal con­tact is broken.

The way to resolve this is to have elec­tri­cal­ly con­duc­tive porous mate­r­i­al between the elec­trode and the mem­brane. The pores allow water and hydro­gen to pass through while pro­vid­ing path­ways for the cur­rent to flow between the elec­trode and the membrane.

Easy, huh?

No. The dif­fi­cul­ty is to cre­ate a good elec­tri­cal con­tact between the elec­tri­cal­ly con­duc­tive porous mate­r­i­al and the mem­brane. And pre­vent the con­tact sur­face from oxi­diz­ing because it is elec­tri­cal­ly insulating.

Enter the stage: Smoltek’s innovation.

If you have been a keen stu­dent, you will rec­og­nize the solu­tion. We’ve made no secret of it since we applied for the patent. (Inven­tions become pub­lic at the time of appli­ca­tion, but in return enjoy pro­tec­tion dur­ing the appli­ca­tion period.)

Smoltek’s inno­va­tion is to insert nanofibers between the elec­trode and the mem­brane. These are attached to the elec­trode or porous mate­r­i­al, and the tip is stuck into the mem­brane. Elec­tri­cal­ly con­duc­tive car­bon nanofibers in elec­tri­cal con­tact with the elec­trode and mem­brane reduce con­tact resistance.

Nano Velcro (SE545846)

Do you like Sein­feld? The TV series? I love it. And like many oth­er fans of television’s great­est shows of all time (that’s a sci­en­tif­ic fact), I can see par­al­lels and sim­i­lar­i­ties every­where between life and the show. In this case, when we talk about Nano Vel­cro, it should be pret­ty obvi­ous that I’m think­ing of Bar­ney Martin’s line, as Morty Sein­feldt: ”I can’t stand vel­cro. That tear­ing sound.” Unlike Morty, we love vel­cro, at least if they are made of car­bon nanofibers and are used to cre­ate strong elec­tri­cal con­tact between two lay­ers in an elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell.

For exam­ple, let’s return to the con­tact sur­face between an elec­tri­cal­ly con­duc­tive porous mate­r­i­al and the sur­face of a mem­brane. Cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy is to press them togeth­er and hope that there is enough elec­tri­cal con­tact. But this has many problems.

On the scale that elec­trons move, there are no smooth sur­faces in per­fect con­tact with each oth­er. Irreg­u­lar­i­ties and grow­ing oxi­da­tion make the con­tact sur­face small­er than you might think. There is also a lot of water and gas­es flow­ing, caus­ing the sur­faces to vibrate, fur­ther dete­ri­o­rat­ing the contact.

In short, it is almost a mir­a­cle that today’s PEM elec­trolyz­ers and fuel cells even work.

This is where our Nano Vel­cro comes in. The idea is to grow car­bon nanofibers from both sur­faces and allow them to be mechan­i­cal­ly entan­gled togeth­er, much like a piece of vel­cro. These car­bon nanofibers should nei­ther be com­plete­ly straight nor grow straight out from the sur­face, but they should twist a lit­tle and grow at a slight angle. This increas­es the entan­gle­ment when they are pressed togeth­er. One can even let the car­bon nanofibers on one side grow almost par­al­lel to the plane they are attached to, to effec­tive­ly cre­ate mechan­i­cal interlocking.

This cre­ates larg­er con­tact sur­faces; each car­bon nanofiber has a sur­face area orders of mag­ni­tude larg­er than the sur­face it grows on. In addi­tion, the entan­gle­ment cre­ates a mechan­i­cal­ly more sta­ble contact.

Vertical Graphene (SE545852)

This inno­va­tion aims at the same thing as the oth­er two: cre­at­ing larg­er and more sta­ble con­tact sur­faces between an elec­tri­cal­ly con­duc­tive porous mate­r­i­al and the sur­face of a mem­brane. Just like in the first-men­tioned patent (SE545845), nanos­truc­tures pro­trud­ing into the mem­brane do the trick. But unlike that, it’s not car­bon nanofibers but ver­ti­cal graphene that does the job.

Car­bon atoms can bond to each oth­er in many dif­fer­ent ways, cre­at­ing many dif­fer­ent struc­tures. Graphene is one of them.

In graphene, the car­bon atoms form hexag­o­nal rings, where adja­cent rings share sides and are in the same plane. It looks like a sheet of chick­en wire where the knots are car­bon atoms, and the threads between them are their bonds.

While the “reg­u­lar” graphene chick­en wire grows along the sub­strate, ver­ti­cal graphene grows per­pen­dic­u­lar to the sub­strate. They form a chick­en wire fence that twists and turns. It looks like a curved wall. This is why ver­ti­cal graphene is also called car­bon nanowalls. They are criss-cross­ing and high­ly interconnected.

So what’s the point of replac­ing the well-known and trust­ed car­bon nanofibers with the new­com­er, ver­ti­cal graphene? Here’s the tri: this fresh entrant in the nano-world is like car­bon nanofibers on steroids. All the things that car­bon nanofibers do well, they do better:

• Sur­face Area: Extreme­ly high sur­face area due to the ver­ti­cal ori­en­ta­tion of the sheets.
• Edge Den­si­ty: Very high den­si­ty of reac­tive edges.
• Con­duc­tiv­i­ty: Good elec­tri­cal con­duc­tiv­i­ty, espe­cial­ly with­in the plane of the sheets.
• Mechan­i­cal Robust­ness: The inter­con­nect­ed sheet struc­ture of ver­ti­cal graphene pro­vides good mechan­i­cal strength and resilience.

In oth­er words, these new kids aren’t just match­ing the old boys – they’re out­play­ing them on many fronts.

A word of caution

I have tried to describe the inno­va­tions cov­ered by the patents in a hope­ful­ly under­stand­able way. There­fore, I have had to sim­pli­fy the descrip­tion and focus on the most imme­di­ate appli­ca­tion areas (fuel cells and PEM elec­trolyz­ers). There­fore, this descrip­tion does not do full jus­tice to the scope and appli­ca­tions of the innovations.

What I mean by this is that the patents pro­tect far more than just improved elec­tri­cal con­tact between elec­trode and pro­ton exchange mem­brane with a porous trans­port lay­er in between; they pro­tect far more elec­tro­chem­i­cal cells than fuel cells and PEM elec­trolyz­ers. For exam­ple, they also pro­tect the anion exchange mem­brane (AEM), which may be used in future elec­trolyz­ers and var­i­ous forms of batteries.

My point is that these three patents give Smoltek the exclu­sive right for twen­ty years to dic­tate the con­di­tions for using these types of solu­tions in all pos­si­ble contexts.

What now?

Life goes on. We con­tin­ue to devel­op our cell mate­r­i­al for PEM electrolyzers.

In the case of the three patents, they each form a new patent fam­i­ly. As the patents for the three inno­va­tions are approved in the EU, the US and oth­er coun­tries, the new patent fam­i­lies will grow.

For Smoltek’s share­hold­ers and investors, these patents are more than just a tes­ta­ment to Smoltek’s unique exper­tise and inven­tive­ness; they rep­re­sent a true strate­gic advan­tage in the grow­ing clean ener­gy market. 

Our com­pa­ny pos­sess­es tech­nol­o­gy and know-how that is increas­ing­ly sought after as the demand for clean ener­gy solu­tions grows. We can safe­ly say that Smoltek is very well poised to face the future and become a key play­er in the field. 

Don’t you agree?