Discovered in 1839 by the Welsh ama­teur sci­en­tist Sir William Grove and demon­strated at the Royal Society. The basic fuel cell reac­tion is:

2H₂ + O₂ — 2H₂O + elec­tricity + heat

For over 100 years fuel cells were regarded as an inter­esting sci­en­tific curiosity until Francis Bacon started to develop com­mer­cially useful demon­stra­tors in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Fuel Cell devel­op­ment really started in the 1960’s with the manned space pro­grammes as this was an ideal device for use in space. They took rocket fuels (hydrogen and oxygen) and made elec­tricity, heat and water, all key life sup­port ele­ments for manned space­craft. All manned space flights have used fuel cells as a power system. Today there are many types of fuel cell capable of run­ning on hydro­car­bons as well as hydrogen and able to provide energy solu­tions from a few watts to multi MW.

The ability to pro­duce hydrogen from elec­trol­y­sers at low cost at many dif­ferent loca­tions will enable a hydrogen net work to be deployed quickly with little or no dis­rup­tion. Ceram Hyd S.A. is devel­oping elec­trol­yser sys­tems that can achieve this goal.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It is one of the most efficient fuels in terms of energy density and whether used in combustion with oxygen or in fuel cells, is emissions neutral. It can be produced using many technologies and feed stocks and hence, is instrumental for energy independence.

Although frequently omitted in media coverage on fuel cells, hydrogen is not just the fuel of the distant future: it is one of the most used commodities in the industry today. An estimated 60 million tons of hydrogen are produced and consumed yearly spanning almost every industrial sector. Hydrogen is currently used in oil refineries, fertilizer production (ammonia), methanol synthesis, pharmaceuticals, metallurgy, semiconductors, float glass, fat hydrogenation etc… After nitrogen, it is the second most consumed gas in the world.

Hydrogen is currently produced through the reforming of hydrocarbons or from electrolysis. Reforming of hydrocarbons, particularly natural gas in the process of steam methane reforming (SMR) is dominant, followed by hydrogen from coal and lastly, only 4% of hydrogen is produced from electrolysis, mostly as a by-product from chlor alkali plants. Every ton of hydrogen produced from SMR results in the emission of 10 tons of CO₂ while hydrogen from coal emits 20 tons of CO₂ per ton of hydrogen. To put this in perspective, if all hydrogen currently produced from natural gas and coal were to be produced from electrolysis powered by renewable sources, global CO₂ emissions would decrease by about 1.9%. The reason why electrolysis is not more frequently used is price as hydrogen produced from electrolysis is 4x more expensive than hydrogen from hydrocarbon sources.

Electrolysis is a familiar concept to most people who took high school chemistry classes. In its most basic form, electrolysis involves the use of two electrodes and water: electricity separates water into its hydrogen and oxygen constituents. But this basic design is inefficient: the oxygen and hydrogen products remix as easily as they separate and the resistivity of a pure water electrolyte (i.e. the inverse of the degree of dissociation) is too high to produce anything useful at all but very high electric currents. To increase the efficiency of electrolysis, the produced hydrogen and oxygen gases must be physically separated: this is accomplished either through the use of diaphragms or membranes. To increase the degree of dissociation of water, acid or base solutions must be used and the electrodes must be coated with the adapted catalysts. Electrolysers that use alkaline (base) electrolytes are called alkaline electrolyzers and the majority of these use diaphragm technology. Those that use membranes and an acid electrolyte are known as proton exchange membranes. The hydrogen production process in both electrolysis methods is schematically shown here.

The CERAPEM technology was conceived to increase the efficiency of electrolysis, reduce the cost of electrolyzers and enable mass production. Electrolyzers based on the CERAPEM technology will be compact, energy-efficient, durable, modular and cheap.

The cost of hydrogen is ultimately dependent on three factors: the feedstock, the technology and the scale of the production. For instance, coal feedstock costs less than natural gas and reformers cost less than electrolyzers per unit power. Scale is essential, particularly in reformers as it drastically decreases the share of equipment cost relative to feedstock in the overall cost of hydrogen. To give an idea, the cost of large volumes of hydrogen produced through SMR with natural gas at 4$/MMBtu can be as low as 2$/kg H₂, whereas hydrogen produced from electrolysis with peak electricity prices (80 $/MWh) and state of the art alkaline electrolyzers can be as high as 12 $/kg H₂. The large discrepancy between the cost of electrolytic hydrogen and hydrogen from hydrocarbons is the underlying reason for the small market share of electrolysis.

Future hydrogen fueled vehicles will require a hydrogen distribution infrastructure. This is a costly enterprise and it is not yet very clear who will bear the costs/risks and reap the rewards of such an large scale infrastructure. In addition, hydrogen refueling stations akin to today’s gasoline stations will require costly and high maintenance compressors to “gas up” the vehicles in a reasonable amount of time (less than 1 minute). An alternative would be to install “home refueling stations”.

As the penetration of intermittent renewable energies in the global primary energy supply increases, energy storage will become a must. Today, electric energy storage is mainly done through pumped hydro dams: whereas pumped hydro is a clean and efficient solution, it is restricted by the geographic availability of suited sites and is only adapted to very large scale energy storage (hundreds of GWh). Storing energy in the form of electrolytic hydrogen for later reconversion into electricity via turbines or fuel cells is a modular, economically viable and environmentally friendly solution.

To date, there is no direct hydrogen subsidy although considerable efforts are being deployed by concerned associations and individuals to establish an initial hydrogen subsidy, similar to the feed-in tariffs of renewable energy, that would help to level the ground for the future development of the hydrogen economy.

Ceram Hyd is already producing commercial electrolyzers. For more details, please contact our sales.

Drinking water: Water must be subjected to stringent treatment requirements before it can be drinkable. A variety of treatments are available addressing different contaminants and impurities that must be removed. An estimated 1,2 billion people in the world do not have access to drinking water that meets the basic requirements of the WHO (World Health Organisation).

Waste water: Sewage, indus­trial and agri­cul­tural water, col­lec­tively known as waste water, must be treated before being dis­patched to meet envi­ron­mental and reg­u­la­tory require­ments. In a variety of indus­trial sys­tems, the appli­ca­tion of chlo­rine min­i­mizes the pres­ence of microor­gan­isms that can cause bio­log­ical fouling, con­tribute to cor­ro­sion, and reduce equip­ment effi­ciency.

Desalination: Desalination is the removal of salt from sea­water to pro­duce drinking water. In many places in the world, ranging from the Gulf coun­tries all the way to Australia, desali­na­tion is one of the main source of drinking water. Many experts also believe that desali­na­tion may be the main solu­tion for the impending water short­ages that seem likely to occur in the not-so-dis­tant future.

 Physical routes: dis­til­la­tion, reverse osmosis, fil­tra­tion tech­niques, elec­tro­dial­ysis, UV

 Chemical routes: ozone, hydrogen per­oxide, chlo­rine

Chlorine is the main chem­ical route for water dis­in­fec­tion and is achieved via the addi­tion of chlo­rine and/or some of its deriva­tives. Chlorination remains to date the first line of defense in drinking water treat­ment. The chlo­rine family of dis­in­fec­tants includes:

Gaseous Chlorine: Chlorine gas can be directly injected to treat water. The chlo­rine gas molecule dis­so­ci­ates to create a mix­ture of hydrochloric acid (no dis­in­fec­tion capa­bility), hypochlo­rite ions (low dis­in­fec­tion capa­bility) and hypochlorous acid (very high dis­in­fec­tion capa­bility). Chlorine gas is toxic and there­fore care must be taken in trans­port and use.

Sodium hypochlo­rite: Sodium hypochlo­rite, com­monly known as bleach, is syn­the­sized by com­bining chlo­rine and caustic soda, either in a cen­tral plant or onsite. Once dis­solved water, sodium hypochlo­rite dis­so­ci­ates into hypochlorous acid and hypochlo­rite ions. Given that sodium hypochlo­rite has a high pH, the con­cen­tra­tion of hypochlorous acid rel­a­tive to hypochlo­rite ions in treated water is typ­i­cally low, entailing the use of a high dosage of sodium hypochlo­rite to achieve the required level of dis­in­fec­tion.

Chlorine dioxide: Chlorine dioxide is a faster-acting dis­in­fec­tant than ele­mental chlo­rine, how­ever it is rel­a­tively rarely used as it may create exces­sive amounts of chlo­rite, and unwanted by-pro­duct. Chlorine dioxide is sup­plied as an aqueous solu­tion and added to water to avoid gas han­dling prob­lems; chlo­rine dioxide gas accu­mu­la­tions may spon­ta­neously det­o­nate. Another major dis­ad­van­tage of chlo­rine dioxide is that it requires longer con­tact times than ele­mental chlo­rine, which may not always be fea­sible.

Hypochlorous acid is the most potent form of chlorination, almost 80 times more efficient than the hypochlorite ion OCl- . When using gaseous chlorine to treat water, half the chlorine goes to make the potent hypochlorous acid whereas the other half makes hydrochloric acid, which is a strong acid. This results in considerable lowering of the treated water’s pH, necessitating pH adjustment after treatment and thus increasing the treatment process’s complexity.

Given the low stability of sodium hypochlorite and the toxicity of gaseous chlorine, it is in general desirable to produce and consume onsite and on-demand, to eliminate the problems of transportation, storage and safety. This goal is hampered by the cost and availability of onsite/on-demand production technologies: gaseous chlorine is typically manufactured in large chlor-alkali plants which cannot be efficiently scaled down while sodium hypochlorite onsite generators are expensive, bulky and inefficient.

Ceram Hyd’s CW series is a highly effi­cient on-site/on-demand gen­er­ator of hypochlorous acid directly which is a break­through in cost, foot­print and resource effi­ciency for onsite chlo­ri­na­tion.