Smoltek Hydro­gen has received an order from the man­u­fac­tur­er for a num­ber of test sam­ples of cell mate­r­i­al for elec­trolyz­ers. The order for the eval­u­a­tion was received from one of Europe’s lead­ing elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, which in the com­ing years will invest in exten­sive expan­sion of its pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty to mass pro­duce electrolyzers.

With this col­lab­o­ra­tion, we are now build­ing demon­stra­tors togeth­er with one of the lead­ing play­ers in the elec­trolyz­er mar­ket. This mar­ket is the pre­req­ui­site behind the growth of fos­sil-free hydro­gen, and is it now grow­ing at record speed.¹

says Elli­nor Ehrn­berg, Pres­i­dent of Smoltek Hydrogen

The elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­er has ordered mate­r­i­al sam­ples of Smoltek’s cell mate­r­i­al for elec­trolyz­ers, which they will inte­grate with their own tech­nol­o­gy into com­plete elec­trolyz­er cells. When the man­u­fac­tur­er has car­ried out com­pre­hen­sive tests of the elec­trolyz­er cells, the results will be joint­ly evaluated.

The mate­r­i­al sam­ples con­sist of porous tita­ni­um that will be coat­ed with Smoltek’s car­bon nanofibers and a cor­ro­sion pro­tec­tion. This enables the elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­er to eval­u­ate how the cell mate­r­i­al per­forms in com­bi­na­tion with the manufacturer’s oth­er mate­r­i­al choic­es and design. Smoltek’s mate­r­i­al is being devel­oped to increase the cur­rent den­si­ty, which is expect­ed to great­ly reduce the size and thus the cost of an elec­trolyz­er. In par­al­lel, the amount of (rare and extreme­ly expen­sive) irid­i­um is also reduced by at least 80%.

Back­ground for the col­lab­o­ra­tion
The elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­er and Smoltek Hydro­gen have agreed to con­duct a project togeth­er where mate­r­i­al from both par­ties are built togeth­er into com­plete elec­trolyz­er cells in lab­o­ra­to­ry size, so-called test cells. The man­u­fac­tur­er will then run these test cells accord­ing to pre­de­ter­mined pro­to­cols. First, the man­u­fac­tur­er will mea­sure the cell’s per­for­mance, and then spe­cif­ic test meth­ods will be used to pro­vide an indi­ca­tion of the cell’s lifes­pan. The results of these mea­sure­ments will be shared with Smoltek, which will result in large time sav­ings as well as cost sav­ings of sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand SEK relat­ed to the val­i­da­tion of the technology.

How­ev­er, the most impor­tant thing about this col­lab­o­ra­tion is that we will learn from each oth­er. By work­ing side by side with elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, we help dri­ve the devel­op­ment of the next gen­er­a­tion of elec­trolyz­ers for­ward. This is done with the goal to make the elec­trolyz­ers much small­er and cheap­er to manufacture.

Elli­nor Ehrnberg

1. Elec­trolyz­er Mar­ket worth over $65 Bn by 2030 ↩︎