Collaboration agreement signed for Smoltek’s green hydrogen solutions

The parties have signed a col­lab­or­a­tion agree­ment, which means that Smol­tek’s car­bon nan­ofibers and cor­ro­sion pro­tec­tion will be com­bined with oth­er mater­i­als from the man­u­fac­turer, and cata­lyst particles from a third party, into a lab-sized demon­strat­or. This demon­stra­tion mater­i­al will then be integ­rated into a com­plete PEM elec­tro­lyz­er cell, fol­lowed by test runs and meas­ure­ment of its performance.

“It is excit­ing that we and our part­ner have now signed a col­lab­or­a­tion agree­ment for this devel­op­ment pro­ject, and we are both look­ing for­ward to devel­op­ing a com­plete PEM elec­tro­lyz­er cell with our pat­ent-pro­tec­ted technology,”

says Fabi­an Wenger, Tech Lead at Smol­tek Innovation

This pro­ject is con­duc­ted to veri­fy the poten­tial of Smol­tek’s nan­ofiber-based cell mater­i­al and its abil­ity to reduce the amount of extremely expens­ive cata­lyst particles in PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers. Smol­tek’s car­bon nan­ofiber tech­no­logy increases the act­ive sur­face that is in con­tact with the mem­brane in the elec­tro­lyz­er cell, which in turn reduces the total size of the elec­tro­lyz­er with main­tained pro­duc­tion capacity.

“Togeth­er, these prop­er­ties sig­ni­fic­antly reduce the pro­duc­tion cost for green hydrogen,”

says Ellinor Ehrn­berg, Pres­id­ent of Smol­tek Innovation.

EU Hydro­gen invest­ments are skyrock­et­ing
18 May 2022 the European Com­mis­sion presen­ted a wide range of ini­ti­at­ives to reduce Europe’s reli­ance on fossil fuels and a list of pro­pos­als aimed to stim­u­late the pro­duc­tion of renew­able hydro­gen and to improve frame­work con­di­tions for European elec­tro­lyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers were included in this plan, known as RePowerEU.

These pro­pos­als included, among oth­ers, two main tar­gets: To increase the industry tar­get from 50% renew­able hydro­gen con­sump­tion in 2030 to 75%. And to doub­ling the next ETS Innov­a­tion Fund call for large scale pro­jects set to be announced in Autumn of this year. EUR 3 bil­lion will be made avail­able, for among oth­er elec­tro­lyz­er manufacturers.

”Fur­ther­more, the European elec­tro­lys­er man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­city must be scaled-up sig­ni­fic­antly to meet the expec­ted demand for renew­able hydro­gen pro­duc­tion. Elec­tro­lys­er man­u­fac­tur­ers in Europe set the object­ive to have in place by 2025 a com­bined annu­al elec­tro­lys­er man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­city in Europe of 17.5 GW, and to fur­ther increase that capa­city by 2030 in line with pro­jec­ted demand for renew­able and low-car­bon hydrogen48. To sup­port these object­ives, the European Com­mis­sion will put in place enabling reg­u­lat­ory frame­work, facil­it­ate access to fin­ance and pro­mote effi­cient sup­ply chains. The upscal­ing of the elec­tro­lys­er man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­cit­ies will require invest­ments estim­ated at up to €2bn,”

states the RePoweEU plan.