New collaboration for our hydrogen business

Smol­tek Hydro­gen has received an order from the man­u­fac­turer for a num­ber of test samples of cell mater­i­al for elec­tro­lyz­ers. The order for the eval­u­ation was received from one of Europe’s lead­ing elec­tro­lyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, which in the com­ing years will invest in extens­ive expan­sion of its pro­duc­tion capa­city to mass pro­duce electrolyzers.

With this col­lab­or­a­tion, we are now build­ing demon­strat­ors togeth­er with one of the lead­ing play­ers in the elec­tro­lyz­er mar­ket. This mar­ket is the pre­requis­ite behind the growth of fossil-free hydro­gen, and is it now grow­ing at record speed.¹

says Ellinor Ehrn­berg, Pres­id­ent of Smol­tek Hydrogen

The elec­tro­lyz­er man­u­fac­turer has ordered mater­i­al samples of Smoltek’s cell mater­i­al for elec­tro­lyz­ers, which they will integ­rate with their own tech­no­logy into com­plete elec­tro­lyz­er cells. When the man­u­fac­turer has car­ried out com­pre­hens­ive tests of the elec­tro­lyz­er cells, the res­ults will be jointly evaluated.

The mater­i­al samples con­sist of por­ous titani­um that will be coated with Smoltek’s car­bon nan­ofibers and a cor­ro­sion pro­tec­tion. This enables the elec­tro­lyz­er man­u­fac­turer to eval­u­ate how the cell mater­i­al per­forms in com­bin­a­tion with the manufacturer’s oth­er mater­i­al choices and design. Smoltek’s mater­i­al is being developed to increase the cur­rent dens­ity, which is expec­ted to greatly reduce the size and thus the cost of an elec­tro­lyz­er. In par­al­lel, the amount of (rare and extremely expens­ive) iridi­um is also reduced by at least 80%.

Back­ground for the col­lab­or­a­tion
The elec­tro­lyz­er man­u­fac­turer and Smol­tek Hydro­gen have agreed to con­duct a pro­ject togeth­er where mater­i­al from both parties are built togeth­er into com­plete elec­tro­lyz­er cells in labor­at­ory size, so-called test cells. The man­u­fac­turer will then run these test cells accord­ing to pre­de­ter­mined pro­to­cols. First, the man­u­fac­turer will meas­ure the cell’s per­form­ance, and then spe­cif­ic test meth­ods will be used to provide an indic­a­tion of the cell’s lifespan. The res­ults of these meas­ure­ments will be shared with Smol­tek, which will res­ult in large time sav­ings as well as cost sav­ings of sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand SEK related to the val­id­a­tion of the technology.

How­ever, the most import­ant thing about this col­lab­or­a­tion is that we will learn from each oth­er. By work­ing side by side with elec­tro­lyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, we help drive the devel­op­ment of the next gen­er­a­tion of elec­tro­lyz­ers for­ward. This is done with the goal to make the elec­tro­lyz­ers much smal­ler and cheap­er to manufacture.

Ellinor Ehrn­berg

1. Elec­tro­lyz­er Mar­ket worth over $65 Bn by 2030 ↩︎