World-leading vehicle manufacturer is testing custom-made cell material

Smol­tek Hydro­gen, a wholly-owned sub­si­di­ary of the Smol­tek Group, has developed a cell mater­i­al that can sig­ni­fic­antly reduce the amount of iridi­um in an elec­tro­lyz­er cell, which has res­on­ated around the world. Among oth­er things, one of the world’s largest vehicle man­u­fac­tur­ers has reached out to get the oppor­tun­ity to test the cell mater­i­al.
 
In the col­lab­or­a­tion that the two com­pan­ies have entered, the vehicle man­u­fac­turer is very inter­ested in the unique con­struc­tion, and in this ini­tial pro­ject, Smol­tek Hydro­gen has delivered a spe­cially man­u­fac­tured and cus­tom­ized cell mater­i­al for test­ing and evaluation.

We have man­u­fac­tured pro­to­types where car­bon nan­ofibers were first coated with plat­in­um, and then applied iridi­um accord­ing to the cus­tom­er­’s requests. It has taken time to fig­ure out exactly how to con­fig­ure the pro­to­types, so that they can also be tested in their labor­at­ory, but now they have just star­ted test­ing the pro­to­types to see if they meet their requirements.

Ellinor Ehrn­berg, Pres­id­ent of Smol­tek Hydrogen

If the test turns out well, we think this cus­tom­er wants to start a lar­ger pro­ject because they have big plans to use their fuel cell tech­no­logy to also devel­op elec­tro­lyz­ers, and there seems to be no oth­er solu­tion to the iridi­um prob­lem than the tech­no­logy we have developed.

Ellinor Ehrn­berg continues

The pro­to­types are based on Smol­tek’s unique and pat­ent-pro­tec­ted car­bon nan­o­tech­no­logy, where the object­ive is to reduce the iridi­um load in the anode elec­trode in elec­tro­lyz­er cells by 95% (which cor­res­ponds to 0.1 mg iridium/​cm²), com­pared to today’s com­mer­cial mater­i­als (which use 2.0 mg iridium/​cm²). Smol­tek Hydro­gen has already proven in long-term tests that the com­pany’s cell mater­i­al can pro­duce the same amount of hydro­gen at only 0.2 mg iridium/​cm², which makes it hope­ful of reach­ing the final goal of 0.1 mg iridium/​cm².

The pro­ject with this cus­tom­er has its back­ground in the present­a­tions of the tech­no­logy that Smol­tek Hydro­gen car­ried out dur­ing the Elec­tro­chem­ic­al Soci­ety meet­ing in Gothen­burg last fall, and next week we will present updated res­ults at the 245th ECS meet­ing, which will be held in San Francisco.

Ellinor Ehrn­berg concludes

Fact box: Smol­tek Hydro­gen­’s cell mater­i­al
Smol­tek Hydro­gen is devel­op­ing a ver­tic­al nan­ofiber-based mater­i­al for the anode por­ous trans­port lay­er (PTL) in PEM elec­tro­lyz­er cells. The mater­i­al con­sists of a sintered por­ous titani­um lay­er with nan­ofibers, a con­form­al plat­in­um cor­ro­sion pro­tec­tion and iridi­um cata­lyst (a thin nan­o­particle lay­er of iridi­um). The mater­i­al is one of the lay­ers in an elec­tro­lyz­er cell. When man­u­fac­tur­ing elec­tro­lyz­ers, a large num­ber of elec­tro­lyz­er cells are assembled into a cell stack, which is the main ele­ment in the elec­tro­lyz­er as it is where the elec­tro­lys­is takes place and hydro­gen is produced.