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Tuesday, May 4, 2010: 4:40 PM
204 (Long Beach Convention Center)
Water electrolysis has benefits over other hydrogen generation technologies due to the lack of carbon footprint when integrated with a renewable source of energy. Specifically, proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis is a promising technology for hydrogen generation applications because of the lack of corrosive electrolytes, small footprint, and ability to generate at high pressure, requiring only deionized water and an energy source. PEM electrolysis also produces very pure hydrogen, with none of the typical catalyst poisons that may be found in hydrogen produced from reforming. However, significant advances are required in order to in order to provide cost-competitive hydrogen source for energy markets. The DOE Hydrogen Program objective for distributed production of hydrogen from distributed water electrolysis to $3.70/gge by 2012.
Proton Energy Systems has developed a multi-year roadmap to address these needs. To date, over 1200 units manufactured by Proton have been installed worldwide, and the current stack design has demonstrated safe and reliable performance over tens of thousands of hours of operation. While the capital cost of the cell stacks can represent up to half the overall system cost, the electricity cost represents 2/3 of the lifecycle cost of commercial PEM electrolyzers. Therefore, both improvements in operational efficiency and cost reduction of most expensive parts are needed in order to reach the DOE targets. The flow fields and membrane electrode assembly combined currently represent over half of the cell stack cost, while the membrane ionic resistance and oxygen evolution overpotential represent the majority of the efficiency losses.
Recent development activity at Proton Energy Systems has led to an almost 20% improvement in efficiency in stack performance, while cost reduction efforts for the cell stack membrane-electrode-assembly (MEA) have netted nearly a 30% savings in material cost. This talk will focus on recent materials advances leading to these achievements. Currently funded projects address development of next generation flow fields and increased utilization of the oxygen evolution catalyst, which will result in further significant improvements in capital cost and efficiency. Progress in these areas will also be discussed.
Proton Energy Systems has developed a multi-year roadmap to address these needs. To date, over 1200 units manufactured by Proton have been installed worldwide, and the current stack design has demonstrated safe and reliable performance over tens of thousands of hours of operation. While the capital cost of the cell stacks can represent up to half the overall system cost, the electricity cost represents 2/3 of the lifecycle cost of commercial PEM electrolyzers. Therefore, both improvements in operational efficiency and cost reduction of most expensive parts are needed in order to reach the DOE targets. The flow fields and membrane electrode assembly combined currently represent over half of the cell stack cost, while the membrane ionic resistance and oxygen evolution overpotential represent the majority of the efficiency losses.
Recent development activity at Proton Energy Systems has led to an almost 20% improvement in efficiency in stack performance, while cost reduction efforts for the cell stack membrane-electrode-assembly (MEA) have netted nearly a 30% savings in material cost. This talk will focus on recent materials advances leading to these achievements. Currently funded projects address development of next generation flow fields and increased utilization of the oxygen evolution catalyst, which will result in further significant improvements in capital cost and efficiency. Progress in these areas will also be discussed.