Smoltek can reduce contact resistance in electrolyzers and fuel cells

Smoltek has been award­ed three new patent grants. Each one of these relates to a new patent fam­i­ly, all of them describ­ing how we can use Smoltek’s core tech­nol­o­gy for reduc­ing con­tact resis­tance in elec­tro­chem­i­cal cells.

Elec­tro­chem­i­cal cells are found in wide­spread appli­ca­tions in mod­ern ener­gy sys­tems, such as bat­ter­ies, fuel cells and elec­trolyz­ers. How­ev­er, exist­ing chem­i­cal cells pos­sess high con­tact resis­tance between dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of the cell which leads to low­er effi­cien­cy. This prob­lem may even be wors­ened by the for­ma­tion of non-con­duct­ing sur­face lay­ers on some com­po­nents due to the harsh envi­ron­ment of the cell.

With these three new patent fam­i­lies, we are real­ly strength­en­ing the scope our IP port­fo­lio with­in the field of increas­ing the effi­cien­cy in elec­tro­chem­i­cal cells, both for elec­trolyz­ers and fuel cells

Fabi­an Wenger, Head of R&D at Smoltek Hydrogen

Inno­va­tion descrip­tion of the new patent fam­i­lies
Con­tact Resis­tance patent fam­i­ly: The Inno­va­tion improve a sep­a­ra­tor plate arrange­ment for an elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell by com­pris­ing a nanos­truc­ture which offers low­ered con­tact resis­tance between the sep­a­ra­tor ele­ment and the dif­fu­sion layer.

Nano Vel­cro patent fam­i­ly: The Inno­va­tion improves the inter­lay­er con­nec­tions in elec­tro­chem­i­cal cells by using elon­gat­ed nanos­truc­tures that are mechan­i­cal­ly entan­gled between the layers.

Ver­ti­cal Graphene patent fam­i­ly: The Inno­va­tion offer low­ered con­tact resis­tance between sep­a­ra­tor ele­ments and adja­cent com­po­nents in elec­tro­chem­i­cal cells and increase resis­tance to corrosion.

It is very valu­able for us to have a plat­form of patents that have wider areas of use than in just PEM elec­trolyz­ers, espe­cial­ly when we are talk­ing to dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies in the hydro­gen indus­try, who often work both with fuel cells and sev­er­al dif­fer­ent types of elec­trolyz­ers. This opens new oppor­tu­ni­ties for our business.

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg, Pres­i­dent of Smoltek Hydrogen

Smoltek’s patent port­fo­lio now glob­al­ly com­pris­es 87 grant­ed patents. Read more about our IP and patents.