Together towards 0.1 mg iridium/​cm2

The Elec­tro­chem­i­cal Soci­ety, the lead­ing pro­fes­sion­al organ­i­sa­tion in elec­tro­chem­i­cal and sol­id-state sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, rarely place their con­fer­ence out­side the Amer­i­c­as. And when they returned to Europe for the first time since 2009, they chose to meet in a city where sus­tain­abil­i­ty of such events is a top pri­or­i­ty: Gothen­burg, Swe­den – the most sus­tain­able city in the world*.

The 244th ECS was also the per­fect event for us, right on time when our next step is to expand the range of poten­tial cus­tomers. And as a first-time con­trib­u­tor and exhibitor at the Elec­tro­chem­i­cal Society’s annu­al meet­ing we cer­tain­ly made an impact, as our booth had a steady stream of curi­ous vis­i­tors. We were busy explain­ing the ben­e­fits of the mate­r­i­al, the tech­nol­o­gy behind it and our hand-in-hand approach to poten­tial cus­tomers. The mes­sage was that we are now ready to engage in prod­uct devel­op­ment projects with elec­trolyz­er companies.

On site at Sven­s­ka Mäs­san in Gothen­burg
The 244th ECS meet­ing was held at the Swedish Exhi­bi­tion & Con­gress Cen­tre, wel­com­ing over 3,400 atten­dees from all over the world. We had since long planned to use this oppor­tu­ni­ty as the start­ing point of the mar­ket intro­duc­tion of our elec­trolyz­er cell mate­r­i­al (ECM) for PEM elec­trolyz­ers, since already now cus­tomers need to start work­ing with us to be able to apply our solu­tion in the next gen­er­a­tion elec­trolyz­ers they are plan­ning for.

On Sun­day Octo­ber 8, Bastien Pen­ninckx gave a con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tion to an audi­ence of experts work­ing on reduc­ing the need of irid­i­um-based cat­a­lyst in PEM elec­trolyz­ers. He intro­duced the prod­uct, the com­pa­ny, what we have already accom­plished, our next steps and how we plan to man­u­fac­ture our ECM in high vol­umes. After many inter­est­ing ques­tions from the audi­ence dur­ing the Q&A, the dis­cus­sions on our solu­tion and roadmap con­tin­ued in our exhi­bi­tion booth, wit­ness­ing a steady flow of indus­try and research rep­re­sen­ta­tives in our booth and keep­ing us busy. Sev­er­al of the industry’s key play­ers expressed a seri­ous com­mer­cial inter­est and joint next steps were discussed.

Green Hood­ie alert!
In our booth we had pre­pared well. We had a huge back­drop, that was an eye catch­er as well as it gave an overview of what we are doing. A tv-screen where we showed pre­sen­ta­tion slides and a short loop­ing film from our in-house H2LAB. We also had small phys­i­cal sam­ples of our cell mate­r­i­al and a sum­ma­riz­ing leaflet to hand out. 

But most impor­tant­ly, we had our R&D and busi­ness peo­ple on site, and we were easy to spot – in our very green hoodies! 

Our out­fit was proven to be a hit as all the curi­ous atten­dees just had to grab hold of some­one in green and start ask­ing about our new mate­r­i­al. The ques­tions were rang­ing from: “How do you make the nanos­truc­tures?” to “How big can you make the cell mate­r­i­al sheet?”. And “How long/​short can you make the nanofibers?”, “Can the tech­nol­o­gy be made for bat­ter­ies?” … they were never-ending. 

But main­ly the atten­dees asked about our cell mate­r­i­al solu­tion for elec­trolyz­ers in general.

In the booth we could talk about how to work with us, and our roadmap for the cell mate­r­i­al. The choice for the cus­tomers is free, do they want to work in their lab or in our lab? They decide. Also, we could offer them to be their devel­op­ment part­ner. And on site we had some sam­ples to offer, and we invit­ed some to vis­it our inhouse-lab.

Fabi­an Wenger, Head of R&D

244th ECS Summary

It was a fan­tas­tic coin­ci­dence that ECS 244 – the most impor­tant con­fer­ence of the year – hap­pened to take place in our home­town right when we need­ed to make the indus­try aware of how to take the first step towards dras­ti­cal­ly reduc­ing the use of irid­i­um. Among the 3,400 vis­i­tors, some were real­ly the spot-on busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy man­agers from the elec­trolyz­er indus­try, and we made lots of new con­nec­tions. It was a busy week also with meet­ings and lab tours at the office. 

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg, President

Our solu­tion for reduc­ing irid­i­um load­ing on the anode-side and at the same time keep­ing per­for­mance intact was well received as we spoke about the 600-hour elec­trolyz­er test result we have made. The effec­tive uti­liza­tion of irid­i­um through half-cell tests at low load­ings were also well taken.

Sankar Sasid­ha­ran, Senior Sci­en­tist Electrochemistry 

It was inter­est­ing to lis­ten to big indus­try peo­ple speak­ing about hydro­gen demand and appli­ca­tions, pric­ing of renew­able ener­gy require­ments and scope of hydro­gen gen­er­a­tion in com­ing years.

Shafiq Kabir, Head of Vol­ume Processes

The ses­sions on ALD also were help­ful to under­stand the tech­niques used and pos­si­ble improve­ments, since we also use it for plat­inum depo­si­tion. And also all the oth­er pre­sen­ta­tions relat­ed to hydro­gen elec­trolyz­ers , tech­niques and cat­a­lysts were almost full all the time under­lined the impor­tance of top­ic we are deal­ing with.

Xin Wen, Senior Sci­en­tist Nanotechnology 

The meet­ing made it easy to have a num­ber of face to face meet­ings with sup­pli­ers we are work­ing with. It is impor­tant to get to know the peo­ple behind the screen, now when we have so many ini­tia­tives going on.

Reka Simon-Balint, Qual­i­ty & Project Manager

So, by Thurs­day Octo­ber 12 when the con­fer­ence end­ed, a great num­ber of the atten­dees at the 244th ECS had got­ten knowl­edge of Smoltek Hydro­gen and that we can make just as much hydro­gen as using a com­mer­cial cat­a­lyst tech­nol­o­gy – but with way less iridium.

* Gothen­burg, the most sus­tain­able city in the world.