Today, all hydrogen sources contain impurities, which requires energy-intense purification before they can be compressed into high-pressure tanks for energy-storage, vehicle refueling and other applications. These high costs hinder the production of the enormous quantities of environmentally friendly ‘green’ hydrogen needed to establish a hydrogen-based economy worldwide. UT researchers are working on solutions for this topic.
Electrochemical hydrogen technologies are attractive, because they can purify and compress hydrogen in ‘one go’ and rely only on renewable electricity input. The electrodes that are currently used in such a process, however, cannot handle the impurities well enough, which makes the process inefficient. Therefore, M-Select’s (the project of Katsoukis a.o.) highest priority is the development of superior impurity blocking coatings for the electrocatalysts to mitigate technological challenges in the hydrogen supply, storage, and conversion chain.
The academic research team includes Bastian Mei (now Ruhr University Bochum), Georgios Katsoukis, and Guido Mul from the UT, and Marc Koper from Leiden University. The industrial partners cover a wide value chain: HyET Hydrogen and HyET Etrol (Technology user), Johnson Matthey (materials provider), and Veeco (equipment manufacturer).
The board of NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences awarded funding (in 2023) to seven research projects through the Open Technology Programme. In total, NWO was funding these projects with 5.4 million euros (companies involved) and other organisations were investing 1.4 million euros in these projects.
