This technology is a water electrolyzer for hydrogen production with higher electrolysis efficiency than conventional polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzers.
Unmet Need: Clean, cost-efficient hydrogen that can rival fossil-derived hydrogen
Current efforts in creating electrolyzers include moving towards “zero-gap” PEM electrolyzers with lower ionic resistances and comparable efficiencies to alkaline electrolyzers. However, the ultrathin Nafion membranes used in these “zero-gap” PEM electrolyzers typically still have a thickness of 125-250um. Attempts to reduce energy losses associated with ionic resistance from these thicknesses have limited success due to decreased manufacturing yields and mechanical failure. Additionally, achieving thicknesses below 50um will be difficult and doing so still may not yield step changes in electrolyzer performance.
The Technology: Ultrathin oxide membranes for high capacity electrolyzers
This technology is a low-temperature water electrolyzer for hydrogen production that utilizes ultrathin oxide membranes to increase efficiency compared to conventional PEM electrolyzers. The lower ionic resistance of this technology is due to its proton-conducting oxide membrane electrolyzers. This allows the technology to have a lower expected capital cost than today’s PEM electrolyzers and may produce clean hydrogen that can compete with fossil-derived hydrogen and gasoline.
Applications:
- Production of clean energy
- Water electrolysis
- Electrochemical CO2 conversion
- Hydrogenation reactions
- Electroorganic synthesis
- Fuel cell
- N2 reduction to NH3
Advantages:
- Reduces membrane size
- Reduces ionic resistances
- Increases efficiency by at high current densities
- Enables large-scale decarbonization
- Enables clean hydrogen production
- Cost-effective
Lead Inventor:
Daniel Esposito, Ph.D.
Patent Information:
Patent Pending
Related Publications:
Bhardwaj A, Vos JG, Beatty MES, Baxter AF, Koper MTM, Yip NY, Esposito DV. “Ultrathin Silicon Oxide Overlayers Enable Selective Oxygen Evolution from Acidic and Unbuffered pH-Neutral Seawater” ACS Catal. 2021 Jan 12; 11(3): 1316-1330.
Beatty MES, Gillette EI, Haley AT, Esposito DV. “Controlling the relative fluxes of protons and oxygen to electrocatalytic buried interfaces with tunable silicon oxide overlayers” ACS Appl. Energy Mat. 2020 Dec 9; 3(12): 12338-12350.
Pang X, Davis JT, Harvey AD, Esposito DV. “Framework for evaluating the performance limits of membraneless electrolyzers” Energy Environ. Sci. 2020 Sept 15; 13: 3663-3678.
Liu X, Li B, Li X, Harutyunyan AR, Hone J, Esposito DV. “The Critical Role of Electrolyte Gating on the Hydrogen Evolution Performance of Monolayer MoS2” Nano Lett. 2019 Oct 2; 19(11): 8118-8124
Davis JT, Brown DE, Pang X, Esposito DV. “High Speed Video Investigation of Bubble Dynamics and Current Density Distributions in Membraneless Electrolyzers” J. Electrochem. Soc. 2019 Mar 6; 166(4): F312-F321.
Robinson JE, Labrador NY, Chen H, Sartor EB, Esposito DV. “Silicon Oxide-Encapsulated Platinum Thin Films as Highly Active Electrocatalysts for Carbon Monoxide and Methanol Oxidation” ACS Catal. 2018 Oct 24; 8(12): 11423-11434.
Beatty MES, Chen H, Labrador NY, Lee BJ, Esposito DV. “Structure–property relationships describing the buried interface between silicon oxide overlayers and electrocatalytic platinum thin films” J. Mater. Chem. A. 2018 Oct 10; 6: 22287-22300.
Labrador NY, Songcuan EL, De Silva C, Chen H, Kurdziel SJ, Ramachandran RK, Detavernier C, Esposito DV. “Hydrogen Evolution at the Buried Interface between Pt Thin Films and Silicon Oxide Nanomembranes”. ACS Catal. 2018 Jan 16; 8(3): 1767-1778.
Labrador NY, Li X, Liu Y, Tan H, Wang R, Koberstein JT, Moffat TP, Esposito DV. “Enhanced Performance of Si MIS Photocathodes Containing Oxide-Coated Nanoparticle Electrocatalysts” Nano Lett. 2016 Sept 16; 16(10): 6452-6459
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