(Invited) Hydrogen Overview and AWSM Project Updates
Authors: Dinh Huyen N. , Peterson David , Randolph Katie , Weber Adam Z. , McDaniel Anthony H. , Boardman Richard , Ogitsu Tadashi , Anton Donald L , Vickers James , Miller Eric L. 
Published: February 2020

HydroGEN (https://www.h2awsm.org/) Energy Materials Network (EMN) a Fuel Cell Technologies Office (FCTO) consortium that aims to accelerate the discovery and development of advanced water splitting materials (AWSM) for sustainable, large-scale hydrogen production, and to more effectively enable the widespread commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, in line with the H2@Scale initiative (https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/h2-scale), and meet the ultimate cost target for production set by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) at $2/kg H2. HydroGEN EMN is a six national laboratories consortium comprises National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) - lead, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Sandia National Laboratory (SNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL). With the rollouts of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) by major automotive manufacturers underway, enabling AWS technologies for the widespread production of affordable, sustainable hydrogen becomes increasingly important.

The HydroGEN Consortium offers more than 80 materials capabilities nodes to help address RD&D challenges in efficiency, durability and cost. The capabilities span computational tools and modeling, materials synthesis, characterization, process manufacturing and scale-up, and analysis. Detailed descriptions of all the HydroGEN nodes are available in a searchable format on the HydrogGEN website (https://www.h2awsm.org/capabilities), including information such as the host National Lab, the capability experts, and a synopsis of the node’s unique aspects and capability bounds. By design, the nodes are cross-cutting, and any given node may be useful for one or several advanced water splitting (AWS) technologies. Leveraging the HydroGEN consortium’s staff of technical experts and broad collection of resource capabilities is expected to advance the maturity and technology readiness levels in all the AWS technologies, including low- and high-temperature electrolysis, photoelectrochecmical (PEC) and solar thermochemical (STCH) routes, which includes hybridized thermochemical and electrolysis approaches to water splitting.

Currently, there are 20 HydroGEN seedling projects, and one project focused on benchmarking advanced water splitting technologies. These 21 new projects utilized over 40 unique capabilities across the six HydroGEN core labs. HydroGEN is indeed a national innovation ecosystem that comprises 11 national labs, 7 companies, and 30 universities. The experimental and computational data generated within HydroGEN are stored and shared within and across projects within the secured HydroGEN Data Hub (https://datahub.h2awsm.org/), which currently comprises 128 users and 3889 data files. The goal is to make the digital data generated within HydroGEN accessible, so the data can be shared and leveraged throughout the EMNs and in future programs.

This presentation will provide an overview of the HydroGEN EMN consortium and highlight some low temperature water electrolysis projects.

Proton Onsite met and exceeded near-term performance targets of 1.85V (achieved 1.8 V) at 2.0 A/cm2, using Proton-synthesized high activity IrRu oxide catalysts of different compositions. The Proton PEM water electrolysis cell also demonstrated 800 hours of durability at 2 A/cm2, operating at 80°C and 30 bar. This project utilized NREL’s ex-situ characterization node towards a better understanding of IrRu oxide catalysts stability. Proton’s improved cell efficiency is a step towards achieving its PEM water electrolysis cell efficiency goal of 43 kWh/kg (1.7 V at 90°C) and at a cost of $2/kg H2.

Collaboratively, LANL, SNL, and NREL demonstrated promising alkaline exchange membrane water electrolysis performance, comparable to iridium oxide, using SNL Anion Exchange Membrane node, LANL-developed PGM-free oxygen evolution reaction perovskite catalyst, and NREL’s expertise in membrane electrode assembly fabrication (Multicomponent Ink Development, High-Throughput Fabrication, and Scaling Studies node) and cell electrolysis testing (In-Situ Testing Capabilities for Hydrogen Generation node).

ANL, together with the LLNL Ab Initio Modeling of Electrochemical Interfaces and LBNL Density Functional Theory and Ab Initio Calculations nodes, investigated the factors that may alter the transport property of a cobalt-based oxygen evolution reaction catalyst, developed by ANL for proton exchange membrane electrolysis. The LLNL team found the origin of the discrepancy between the reported experimental and theory-derived electronic structure of cobalt oxide. This resulted in the confidence to choose a specific theory that can provide reliable information about the electronic structure of the cobalt oxide materials family. This is crucial to reliably identify the factors that determine the transport property of this material, which affects the overall catalytic activity.

HydroGEN looks forward to growing its membership of industry, university and laboratory collaborators that can partner with member-laboratory experts by way of CRADAs and potential future FOAs. Moving forward, HydroGEN will expand its presence in the AWS community through working group meetings and participation at relevant professional meetings.