Hydrogen Production by Alkaline Polymer Electrolyte Electrolysis

The HAPEEL project have contributed to the development of a new type of water electrolyser for hydrogen production. The so called anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) technology has the potential to combine the low cost of alkaline electrolysers with the compactness and flexibility of PEM electrolysers. This new type of electrolyser is based on a anion exchange membrane (AEM) wich conducts OH- ions instead of H + ions and opens up for the use of materials with significantly lower costs than noble metals and titanium. The potentially lower cost will directly result in the ability to produce hydrogen from renewable energy with significantly lower costs than today. The main challenge for this type electrolyser is to achieve sufficient conductivity of the membrane and to produce highly active catalysts for hydrogen evolution. This project has partnered with the world's leading experts in alkaline polymers that will offer their materials for testing. The Norwegian fuel cell and hydrogen centre will be used to tested and characterized these AEMWE devices. In 2018, the HAPEEL project kicked off by employing a new PhD candidate. Alaa Faid was admitted to PhD program in Materials Science and Engineering at NTNU. His main task has been to work on the HAPEEL project improving the cathode of anion exchange membrane water electrolysers (AEMWE) by Rational design of HER catalysts for alkaline environment. Alaa and NTNU has done great progress with the synthesis of hydrogen evolution (HER) catalysts using different synthesis techniques, e. g. Co-precipitation, chemical reduction, hydrolysis and wet impregnation. NiMo catalysts have shown the highest electrochemical activity and have already been tested in real AEMWE application by SINTEF. SINTEF has worked on validating different membrane technologies from external international collaborators, e.g. Ionomr Innovation (Canada), Evonik (Germany) and has already established good methodologies for AEM testing. In addition, two student guests from Canada have been at SINTEF working on AEMWE. Amelia Hohenadel PhD from SFU working on new AEM membranes and Emily Cossar Master student from University of Ottawa working on new Ni-based Oxygen evolution catalysts for AEMWE. In 2019, the HAPEEL project has continued with good progress, NTNU has continued to focus on Ni-based electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction, including the development of NiCo, NiFe and NiCu catalyst systems. The HAPEEL team has attended several international conferences and published two new peer reviewed scientific papers. In the later half of 2019, NTNU and SINTEF have focused on integrating these new PGM-free catalysts into composite electrode in real AEM devices, performing long-term durability tests. Emily Cossar, now a PhD student from university of Ottawa, decided to revisited SINTEF during the spring. In addition, a post-doctoral student from SFU Canada, Patrick Fortin, also visited the SINTEF lab during the spring. The HAPEEL consortium have received a lot of attention for their work so far and have been contacted by several international companies needing help developing the technology. SINTEF, NTNU, together with several other EU companies and research institutes, applied for H2020 funding, with SINTEF as coordinator. The project has now been granted and expected to start in 2020. In 2020, the HAPEEL project continued the work on developing the AEM devices. The NTNU PhD candidate Alaa Faid, visited University of Toronto for a student exchange. The visit also resulted in a new scientific publication. In addition, the SFU post-doc Patrick Fortin that visited in 2019 was hired by SINTEF. This last year of the project was focused on the optimization of the AEM device. SINTEF hosted a Master student from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven that worked on optimisation of MEAs. Two NTNU bachelor students from the Department of Energy and Process Engineering designed, constructed, and tested a full AEM stack. The NTNU PhD candidate have now submitted his thesis and will be hired as a post-doc to work on the new SINTEF/NTNU EU project CHANNEL aiming at developing a 2kW AEM electrolyser stack and system.

Prosjektet HAPEEL har fornyet det vitenskapelige forståelsen og resultere i en større forståelse av katalysatorer og katalytiske elektroder for AEM elektrolyse gjennom en kombinasjon av grunnleggende og anvendte forskning. HAPEEL-prosjektet har utvidet følgende kunnskap: 1. Utvikling av metoder rettet mot karakterisering av morfologien og ledningsevnen til katalytiske lag. 2. Ytelsen mot sammensetningen og strukturen til de katalytiske lagene og muliggjort rasjonell design og valg av materialer for HER i AEM. 3. Økt interesse før kommersialisering av AEM-teknologien i Norge og EU. SINTEF og NTNU nå leder et H2020 EU prosjekt innom AEM elektrolyse som heter CHANNEL.

The HAPEEL project will contribute to the development of a new type of water electrolyser. The Alkaline Polymer Electrolyte Electrolysis (APEE) has the potential to combines the low cost of alkaline electrolysis with the high power and flexibility of PEM electrolysis. One of the main issues of all water electrolysis in alkaline environment is the significant efficiency loss related to the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Rational design for active HER catalyst has recently been proposed. However, these reports commonly investigate the catalyst activity in liquid electrolytes, not representative of the soli-state APEE environment, e. g. catalyst and polymer composite electrode. The central hypothesis of HAPEEL is that HER activity in real APEE electrolysers is strongly dependent on both catalysts activity and the type and amount of the polymer phase in the electrode. To address this, HAPEEL has gathered a unique group of world-leading experts in the field of alkaline polymers to provide HAPEEL with these materials. HAPEEL will design and synthetize state-of-the-art HER catalysts; it will develop fabrication and characterization methods for these composite electrode; and it will perform full in-situ electrochemical characterization in real APEE devices in order to understanding catalyst/polymer interactions. The in-situ electrochemical testing will be carried out using the new Norwegian Fuel Cell and Hydrogen center. The concepts developed in HAPEEL aims to support Norwegian industries towards future transformations within the energy sphere. It will educate a PhD candidate and will focus in disseminating and communicating the results to end-users.