Part of an effort to support the global hydrogen economy, the duo said they hope to diagnose sources of degradation in commercial electrolysis cells and will validate advanced designs that use higher stack currents.

To do this, researchers will focus on proton-exchange membrane electrolysis and will study the methods of managing heat and degradation with high current densities. Members of the team aim to optimise multiple engineered layers, shrinking the system size and costs.

On the project and partnership, Guido Bender, NREL Principal Investigator on the Project, said, “Electric Hydrogen is engineering a high-performance product for water electrolysis—something that could scale up to significant commercial applications.

“NREL has pretty unique hardware for testing electrolyser stacks; this will allow us to characterise efficiency, durability, and performance across a range of operating conditions.”

“This partnership really creates value in multiple directions. While Electric Hydrogen develops its product, we develop our research capabilities to be more sensitive to device degradation, and, as a result, the entire renewable industry benefits as we achieve new benchmarks in cost and performance.”

David Eaglesham, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Electric Hydrogen, added, “Our goal is to build industrial-scale electrolysis so that carbon-heavy industries can adapt. NREL has a history of helping next-up technologies scale to larger markets, and we are confident that this collaboration will achieve similar breakthroughs for renewable hydrogen.”

The project builds on more than a decade of research at NREL by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office and supports DOE’s H2@Scale vision.

US DOE, General Motors, Microsoft and Plug Power

What does the US Department of Energy (DOE), General Motors, Microsoft and Plug Power have in common? They’re all speaking at H2 View’s North American Virtual Hydrogen Event in October. Will you be joining us on October 19?

North America is in a prime position to lead efforts in decarbonisation, but it still has great distances to travel. The region has been giving chase in a race to green hydrogen dominated by Europe and Asia-Pacific. If policymakers and industry can work together and take the right steps to realise a hydrogen vision, the region is perfectly placed to expand its global energy leadership at scale and speed.

What lessons can be learned from Europe’s policymakers? What are the challenges to be overcome? What are the strengths and opportunities? How can North America go from giving chase to taking a lead in hydrogen? These are all questions our virtual event will address across H2 View’s four pillars of Mobility, Power, Policy and Technology.

Further information on the event, agenda and confirmed speakers can be found here.

To book your virtual delegate pass, click here.