Revolutionizing electrolyzer technology to meet future needs for cost-effective hydrogen

“A grow­ing new area that we are look­ing at right now is tech­no­logy for energy con­ver­sion, spe­cific­ally elec­tro­lyz­ers for hydro­gen-based energy sys­tems, where we have already filed sev­er­al pat­ent applic­a­tions,” says Ellinor Ehrn­berg, head of Smol­tek Innovation.

Dis­trib­uted hydro­gen pro­duc­tion will play a sig­ni­fic­ant role in the future, includ­ing as an infra­struc­ture com­pon­ent for heavy vehicles that in the future will be powered by fuel cells, as well as in fossil-free steel pro­duc­tion, where sev­er­al Swedish pro­jects are cur­rently under­way. More and more play­ers are review­ing the pos­sib­il­it­ies of stor­ing energy when oth­er renew­able energy sources such as sol­ar, wind and water do not deliver.

The Swedish Energy Agency has, on behalf of the gov­ern­ment, developed a nation­al hydro­gen strategy to facil­it­ate the trans­ition to fossil-free.

“There are many that are talk­ing about stor­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing hydro­gen, but few are inter­ested in mod­ern­iz­ing the pro­duc­tion technology,”

Ellinor Ehrn­berg continues.

Of par­tic­u­lar interest is Pro­ton Exchange Mem­brane (PEM) elec­tro­lys­is where the cells con­tain a water-absorb­ing elec­tro­lyte of a poly­mer mem­brane. Expens­ive metals such as plat­in­um or iridi­um are used as cata­lyst mater­i­als, but these particles are placed ran­domly and partly hid­den in cur­rent PEM cells. Smoltek’s tech­no­logy enables these expens­ive particles to be organ­ized to come into full con­tact with the mem­brane and thus reaches full hydro­gen pro­duc­tion with a less­er amount of expens­ive metals.

“Our tech­no­logy should be able to pro­duce two to three times more hydro­gen per cell com­pared to exist­ing tech­no­logy. This is because two to three times more cata­lyst particles can be in con­tact with the mem­brane at the same time.”

“It is all based on the fact that our tech­no­logy can grow the nano­struc­tures in a way that gives a ver­tic­al 3D effect, which optim­izes the func­tion­al sur­face lay­er. This makes our tech­no­logy both eco­nom­ic­al­lay and envir­on­ment­ally sustainable.”

Ellinor Ehrn­berg explains.

In the auto­mot­ive industry, it is said that per­haps 20 per­cent of the elec­tric cars of the future will not be powered by bat­ter­ies, but fuel cells. Espe­cially in heavy trans­ports, as the hydro­gen reduces weight per stored energy, which makes it more suit­able than a bat­tery when you need a longer range. Ellinor Ehrn­berg exem­pli­fies with the Volvo Group, which recently formed a joint ven­ture with Daimler Truck AG for large-scale pro­duc­tion of fuel cells.

“This is very much some­thing that is on the rise. The same applies, of course, to the mar­ine and aerospace indus­tries, where they also want to invest in sus­tain­able, energy- dense altern­at­ives, which are suit­able for long dis­tances and which can be stored dir­ectly in vehicles without sig­ni­fic­antly increas­ing weight,”

Ellinor Ehrn­berg concludes.

Smol­tek is still in an early research phase, Proof of concept, to demon­strate the feas­ib­il­ity of the tech­no­logy, but since the concept is so prom­ising and the poten­tial mar­ket is so large, the com­pany wants to act quickly and is now look­ing for part­ners with whom they want to real­ize the new elec­tro­lyz­er concept.

Image: Ellinor Ehrn­berg, Pres­id­ent at Smol­tek Innovation

This con­tent is trans­lated from an edit­or­i­al ad in Ny Teknik, April 15 2021.