Hieff PEM, a game changing High efficiency PEM electrolyser for hydrogen production

More than 70 million tonnes of hydrogen are produced annually with a market price of around USD 118 billion. The hydrogen market is growing by more than 5% per year and hydrogen is already an important raw material in several well-established, industrial processes, such as oil refining and fertilizer production. Hydrogen is one of the best alternatives for fossil-free transport and industry. However, it is almost twice as expensive to produce hydrogen from water electrolysis as from fossil sources. Researchers at SINTEF have recently demonstrated a technical breakthrough on a lab scale. Hieff-PEM is SINTEF's patent-pending solution which consists of: 1) a new and innovative fully integrated water electrolysis stack and 2) a process modification that reduces losses in current electrolysers up to 50%! If this result stands on full scale, it means up to 100% increased production capacity (alternatively 50% reduced cost) in the electrolyser, which potentially makes water electrolysis competitive against large-scale hydrogen production from fossil sources and opens up a significantly increased market for these products. In this FORNY project, we have verified the concept against existing commercial electrolysers in terms of energy consumption, hydrogen production capacity and business competitiveness. The verification results have proven that the concept can deliver significantly improved performance of PEM electrolysers both in price and energy consumption and based on these results, SINTEF has established a start-up company that will market, produce and sell patent-protected PEM electrolysers with improved performance compared to current products on the market.

Hieff-PEM vil bidra til en mer energieffektiv og fossilfri hydrogenproduksjon. Produktet vil gjøre fornybar hydrogenproduksjon til industrielle anvendelser mer konkurransedyktig mot fossile energikilder og dermed bidra til reduserte utslipp av CO2. Hieff-PEM stacken har en høyere produksjonskapasitet enn tilsvarende produkter og vil redusere forbruket at kritiske og sjeldne materialer slik som platina og iridium. Produktet har bidratt til etablering av et nytt norsk selskap som skal produsere elektrolysører i Norge. Selskapet planlegger hurtig vekst og har som mål å ansette rundt 10 personer i 2021.