Apr
8
A Cheaper Efficient Water Splitting System Design
April 8, 2020 | Leave a Comment
A Washington State University team has developed a less expensive water electrolysis system that works under alkaline conditions but still produces hydrogen at comparable rates to the currently used system that works under acidic conditions and requires precious metals. This advance brings down the cost of water splitting technology, offering a more viable way to store energy from solar and wind power in the form of hydrogen fuel.
Anion Exchange Membrane Electrolysis Graphic. Image Credit: Washington State University . Click image for the largest view.
Currently the most popular system used for water splitting, or water electrolysis, relies on precious metals as catalysts, but a collaborative research team, including scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Washington State University, has developed a system that uses less expensive and more abundant materials.
The WSU team described the advance in a paper published in Nature Energy.
Yu Seung Kim, a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and corresponding author on the paper said, “The current water electrolysis system uses a very expensive catalyst. In our system, we use a nickel-iron based catalyst, which is much cheaper, but the performance is comparable.”
Most water splitting today is conducted using a piece of equipment called a proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer, which generates hydrogen at a high production rate. It’s expensive, and works under very acidic conditions, requiring precious metal catalysts such as platinum and iridium as well as corrosion-resistant metal plates made of titanium.
The research team worked to solve this problem by splitting water under alkaline, or basic, conditions with an anion exchange membrane electrolyzer. This type of electolyzer does not need a catalyst based on precious metals. In fact, a team led by Yuehe Lin, professor at WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, created a catalyst based on nickel and iron, elements that are less expensive and more abundant in the environment.
Lin’s team shared their development with Kim at Los Alamos, whose team in turn developed the electrode binder to use with the catalyst. The electrode binder is a hydroxide conducting polymer that binds catalysts and provides a high pH environment for fast electrochemical reactions.
The combination of the Los Alamos-developed electrode binder and WSU’s catalyst boosted the hydrogen production rate to nearly ten times the rate of previous anion exchange membrane electrolyzers, making it comparable with the more expensive proton exchange membrane electrolyzer.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy about 10 million metric tons of hydrogen are currently produced in the United States every year, mostly by using natural gas in a process called natural gas reforming. Hydrogen produced from a water splitting process that is powered by electricity from renewable energy holds many economic and environmental benefits, Lin noted.
“Water splitting is a clean technology, but you need electricity to do it,” said Lin, who is also a corresponding author on the paper. “Now we have a lot of renewable energy, wind and solar power, but it is intermittent. For example, at night we can’t use solar, but if during the day, we can use extra energy to convert it into something else, like hydrogen, that’s very promising.”
The global hydrogen generation market is expected reach $199.1 billion by 2023. Potential markets for hydrogen energy include everything from mass energy conversion and power grid management to fuel cells for cars. Lin estimates that there are approximately 600 wind farms in the United States ready for direct connections to water electrolysis systems.
In addition to Los Alamos and WSU, researchers at Pajarito Powder and Sandia National Laboratories also contributed to this work. This research was supported by the HydroGen Advanced Water Splitting Materials Consortium established under the U.S. Department of Energy and Washington state’s JCDREAM program.
Could this technology be the breakthrough for hydrogen fuel? Maybe, but we’ve seen these ideas come for years now and steam reforming remains the primary production system. Its sure to be smarter than buying multimillion dollar batteries for wind turbines on wind farms, but that future looks pretty limited as folks wake up to the immense waste of money lost by taxpayers and ratepayers in those projects and may disappear entirely if true low cost energy production comes from nuclear or fusion designs. As Barnam essentially said, over a century ago, you can’t fool everyone forever.
On the other hand, hydrogen is a great fuel for fuel cells and would be a good one even for combustion engines, if only the solution(s) for storing the smallest atom can be found. That is the materials challenge of the century.
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