The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) project is in addressing the urgent need for cost-effective, high-volume fabrication of durable electrodes for two of the most promising sustainable and clean power generation technologies, electrolyzers and fuel cells. Current low-volume electrode optimization processes, aimed at lowering the need for special chemicals (catalysts) and improving durability, are costly and slow, hindering the commercialization of these important technologies. If successful, the project will enable scaling up the production of a novel catalyst and will establish highly needed scientific understanding of the correlations between catalyst properties, electrode fabrication processes and performance. Therefore, this project is expected to provide clear guidance for the design of novel catalysts and electrodes. The multidisciplinary partnership between academic, industrial and National Renewable Energy Laboratory experts will work towards moving fuel cell and electrolyzers to the next level of high-scale production. Overall, the project is expected to enable the commercialization of clean energy technologies, benefit the environment and the US economy.
The proposed project aims to establish: 1) scale-up approaches to fabricate a novel, internally developed catalyst, with tunable properties and enhanced performance and durability, and 2) structure-property-process-performance (SPPP) correlations applicable to a wide range of catalysts/ink/electrode fabrication methods to enable fast transition to cost-effective scaled-up fabrication of fuel cell and electrolyzer electrodes, bringing these technologies closer to commercialization. Despite large investments and growing interest in these technologies, their commercialization is hindered by high cost and low durability of currently employed catalysts, and by slow and costly low-volume components fabrication. To address these challenges, the project will investigate a number of scalable ink/electrode fabrication approaches using advanced catalyst/ink/electrode characterization methods, providing a large parameter matrix for structure-property-process-performance correlations. The parameter matrix and established correlations will aid future catalyst/ and electrode design and enable fast transition from the current time-consuming and costly incremental low-scale process, to a streamlined and advanced scale-up approach. The anticipated technical results include: 1) delivery of 25g batches of novel catalyst produced at scale; 2) identification of SPPP correlations; 3) validation of team findings by industrial partner for effective technology transfer, and 4) dissemination of recommendations/protocols derived from the project to the community to promote deployment of future innovations.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
